Pete Crow-Armstrong hits walk-off homer, reaches 30-30 for second straight year

Economy World


CHICAGO — Pete Crow-Armstrong has already had multiple MVP moments this season. Monday night just adds another to the list.

Crow-Armstrong homered twice, the second one getting him to 30 home runs on the year, allowing him to achieve 30 homers and 30 stolen bases in back-to-back seasons. He connected on the first pitch he saw to lead off the game. Then three hours and 21 minutes later, he sent Cubs fans home happy with a two-run shot in the 10th inning to top the Chicago White Sox 7-5 at Wrigley Field.

“This is what great players do,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “We’ve got a number of these moments this season from Pete. It’s a great player moment. They step up in situations like this.”

Crow-Armstrong went 4-for-5 on the night with the two homers, a double and a walk, and he stole a base, his 31st of the season. It was his fourth multi-homer game of the season and his first walk-off homer of his career.

Where did this game rank for the young star?

“I don’t rank ’em,” Crow-Armstrong said. “That was fun.”

Crow-Armstrong is now up to a 154 wRC+ on the season, third in all of baseball and just above his competition for National League MVP, Los Angeles Dodgers two-way player Shohei Ohtani. He’s reached 8.2 WAR (FanGraphs), lapping the other position players and over a full point above Ohtani.

Is this back-and-forth with Ohtani, who homered on the night as well, getting fun?

“For you guys,” Crow-Armstrong said. “When you play a game like we did tonight, that’s all the fun I need in my life ever.”

Crow-Armstrong became the first Cubs player to have back-to-back 30-30 seasons and the third in MLB history to have multiple 30-30 seasons in his age-24 season or younger.

What does that mean to him?

“Nothing yet,” Crow-Armstrong said. “We still got a ways to go.”

Crow-Armstrong had been in a little bit of a slump. He struggled on the team’s most recent road trip and in a weekend series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. Over his previous eight games, Crow-Armstrong had slashed .111/.179/.333, and he was well aware.

“I had a lot of conversations the last couple days about perspective,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I wasn’t reminding myself that it was only really a week of not-so-good stuff. But today I was like, it’s pedal to the metal.”

That mentality seemed to work out quite well for Crow-Armstrong.

“To do what he did tonight on the heels of that is just incredible,” Counsell said. “This might be his best game in the big leagues right here. It was an amazing game.”