40 home runs in a season is impressive. Pairing it with 40 steals puts you in elite company.
On Thursday, Pete Crow-Armstrong swiped his 40th bag of the season and joined the 40-40 club. Canseco. Bonds. A-Rod. Soriano. Acuña. Ohtani. And now PCA, the first Cub to ever do it. Only Ohtani and Soriano have also paired 45 homers with 40 steals in the same season.
PCA has put up one of the most dominant seasons in recent memory. We haven’t seen this much excitement from a Cub stepping up to the plate since Sammy Sosa.
For the hobby, that can either be a good thing or a bad thing. More often than not, the hobby tends to emotionally jump the gun.
We want to know how it’s pricing PCA right now. Is the MVP already baked in? He’s already the face of the Cubs franchise, but has the hobby already penciled him in as one of the faces of the sport? Have we missed the buying window as prices explode leading up to the MVP vote? Or is this our last chance before things get even crazier?
Let’s rip in.
M.V.Pete.
CF / Chicago Cubs / Draft Info: Round 1, Pick 19 (2020, New York Mets)
PCA’s road to Wrigley was anything but smooth. The Mets took the Harvard-Westlake star 19th overall in 2020, but being drafted in 2020 meant there was no minor league baseball for him to jump into until the following season. When he finally got on the field, right shoulder surgery ended his 2021 after just 24 at-bats. Two months later, the Mets traded him for Javier Báez, sending him to the team he and his dad grew up rooting for.
At first, it was the glove that caught our attention. Statcast rated him the second-best defensive outfielder in baseball in 2024.
In 2025, he started the All-Star Game, joined Sammy Sosa as the only Cubs with a 30-30 season, and won his first Gold Glove. But the bat faded hard down the stretch. After July, he hit just four homers over his final 51 games, and his walk rate was fifth-worst among qualified hitters. This year, he found an answer to all of it. His walk rate more than doubled, his chase rate on sliders fell, and his bat speed jumped.
He’s hitting .282 with 45 homers (tied for the MLB lead) and 107 RBI, and he leads MLB in defensive outs above average. He also took every first-place vote in MLB.com’s final NL MVP poll.
Bottom line: PCA is a 24-year-old center fielder, signed through 2032, with the Cubs’ first MVP since Kris Bryant well within reach. The tools were always there. Now the bat has caught up.
