Ivy League Cubs

By: Jake Russell

Pete Crow-Armstrong’s 2024 season was a tale of two halves. It was ultimately very successful and certainly very promising towards the future. He certainly has areas to improve upon, but it’s encouraging nonetheless to see him progress.

PCA’s first stint on the Major League roster this year began on April 24th. He had just 63 plate appearances from then until being optioned. Results were effectively in line with his season statline–he had an 86 wRC+, hit .236 with a .659 OPS. He was sent back down to AAA, only to promptly be recalled after he lit AAA on fire for the 10 days he was down. Unfortunately, the next month-and-a-half were not quite as good. He had just a 51 wRC+ from then up until the All-Star Break, with his last game of the first half doing heavy lifting–he hit two homers against the Cardinals, which really could be marked as the beginning of his offensive turnaround.

Across the entirety of the second half, Pete had a 104 wRC+. He managed to raise his season wRC+ up to 87. During the month of August, he was an offensive force for the Cubs–he had a 154 wRC+, and his walk rate for the month was over 8%.

That has been his biggest issue–plate discipline. PCA loves to swing, to a fault. He was in the 2nd percentile for chase rate (that is, pitches swung at outside of the zone) in 2024, which can severely limit potential for damage on contact. Think about it–the more pitches you swing at outside of the zone, the less chance you have of making good contact. 

Thanks to Fangraphs, I was able to graph PCA’s 15-game rolling chase% versus his 15-game rolling OPS, and you can see that it appears very inversely correlated–that is, the less he chases, the better his offensive output, and the opposite is also true. His plate discipline peaked during August, his best offensive month–that’s no coincidence.

That should hopefully be his biggest area of focus this offseason. Now, I’m no hitting coach, and that is obviously much easier said than done. Some guys just feel more comfortable swinging–but if PCA can begin to see the ball better, and his pitch recognition can improve, that could be huge for him and the Cubs offense.

Additionally, his defense was obviously fantastic. Despite not clearing 1000 innings, he was tied for third among Centerfielders in Defensive Runs Saved, and tied for fourth in Outs Above Average. He also led all outfielders in 5-star catches, with seven (those are catches deemed to have between 0-25% catch probability according to Baseball Savant).

For example, on this play PCA needed to cover an incredible 82 feet in 4.2 seconds–a catch probability of 5%, according to Baseball Savant.

PCA made this look like a 99% catch probability play, because of how incredibly great his instincts and reads are. He was 6th in Baseball Savant’s tracked “Feet vs average”, a stat that uses player tracking to track how many feet a player gains on average based on their jump, route, and their speed. I suppose it does help that he is lightning quick–regardless, nobody should be able to make a play that difficult look that easy. PCA can, and frequently does.

Overall Grade: A-

PCA gave us so much to be excited about. He ended with just under 3 fWAR, thanks to a fantastic offensive hot streak where he showed real growth at the end of the season, platinum glove level defense, and oh yeah, he had 27 steals with just 3 caught steals.

PCA is such a fun player. He really does remind me of Javier Baez–plate discipline issues, good power, incredible athlete, incredible defender, and overall an electric player who just seems to feed off of other people’s energy. I hope he can be this Cubs’ team version of Javier Baez, because that is an MVP candidate–but really, I’d be pretty content with the version he was this year, too. It’s hard to complain about 3 win players, but the ceiling is sky-high for Pete.

Picture Credit: Michael Reaves, Getty Images