How Cubs' Pete Crow-Armstrong is progressing at the plate

On July 3, Pete Crow-Armstrong had a simple, astute observation that basically every young player comes to understand at the beginning of their big league career: “This shit’s hard.”

Despite doubling twice and driving in two runs for the Chicago Cubs that day, Crow-Armstrong’s overall numbers weren’t very pretty. He raised his batting average to .199 and his OPS to .541 after that two-double game. He had a 52 wRC+, which was 48 percent below the major league average.

At that point, Crow-Armstrong was 66 games and 169 plate appearances into his big league career, and the offensive struggles were obvious.

“I mean, it’s the same game [as the minors],” Crow-Armstrong said a couple days later. “I think that’s always important to acknowledge. But everybody’s just better. I think that’s the easiest, most simple, best way to put that. Everybody’s just better up here.”

But the Cubs made a decision to ride with their 22-year-old rookie center fielder this season. His defense and speed have definitely helped win ballgames, and they were willing to live with the offensive growing pains because they knew major league development would come.

“You want Pete to improve during the season, and you want to get to points where you think there’s positive things happening and growth happening,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “I think that’s probably what you expect the most is that you see growth out of it. When you challenge a young player with an everyday job against major league pitching, then you know there’s going to be some ups and downs with that.”

Roughly a month after acknowledging how tough hitting in the majors is, Crow-Armstrong’s numbers have improved.

Following a two-hit game (both had exit velocities of over 101 mph) in the Cubs’ 6-3 over the Cardinals on Sunday, he’s up to a .202 average with a .575 OPS, and his wRC+ has also risen to 60. Even better, he’s showing progress in some of those underlying aspects of hitting.

After that July 3 game, Crow-Armstrong’s strikeout rate was 27.3 percent (which to be fair looked much better than his 36.8 percent mark in a 19-PA sample in 2023). As far as his contact quality numbers, his average exit velocity was 87 mph, his barrel rate was 4 percent and his hard-hit rate was 29 percent. After Sunday, his strikeout rate was down to 23.9 percent, and his average EV, barrel rate and hard-hit rate were up to 88.4 mph, 4.4 percent and 32.1 percent, respectively.

While those numbers don’t say he’s figured it out, and not all of them are massive improvements from where they were a month ago, the Cubs are certainly noticing progress.

“He continues to just have good at-bats,” Counsell said. “That’s what’s been great. Really, since we went to St. Louis and post-All-Star break, just been really solid at-bats. … The pitch selection has been much better as well. There’s probably a little bit of everything kind of going on there, but it’s been fun to watch. It’s been fun to watch. He hits the ball hard and he can get the ball in the gaps. We know about his baserunning, so it makes a big difference in this offense.”

“I’ve grown a lot,” Crow-Armstrong said when asked how he’s grown offensively since making his debut last September. “I think learning how to have an at-bat every time I go to the plate. Confidence is a thing that you need experience and you need to see hits fall for that, I think, but I think what’s equally been great is the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about that a lot, but just starting to make better outs. I think that’s helped a lot.”

Part of the progress has come from a mechanical change.

Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly said that, soon after they returned from the All-Star break, he did a drill with Crow-Armstrong that involved a bit of a leg kick, geared toward keeping him on his backside before he makes his forward move. They saw some success with the leg kick in the drill, and they decided to bring it into game action to see how it translated.

To them, the results since then have been positive.

“He’s got that little leg kick in there,” Kelly said. “There’s a little bit more of a hang, he stays on his backside, and it’s really allowed him to let the ball travel a little bit more. Doesn’t feel like he has to go out and get baseballs. The numbers probably haven’t quite shown yet, but if you watch the game, you’ve seen a better quality of at-bat from him, and that’s what we hope for.”

There’s also the fact that, simply, more experience facing major league pitching will only benefit Crow-Armstrong. Maybe he makes strides in dialing back his chase rate. Maybe you see the strikeout and whiff rates continue to drop as he recognizes pitches more and makes better swing decisions.

Development is going to happen for him the more at-bats he gets, even if the struggles are still there.

“He’s going to learn from at-bats,” Counsell said, “and as long as we see learning coming from the at-bats — not on an at-bat-by-at-bat basis, but over a weekly and bi-weekly basis — then you feel like he’s earning more at-bats, and that’s development.”

“[Going through struggles is] hard for young guys, because they want to go out there, they want to perform and they want to help the team,” Kelly said. “But you just know that there’s a learning curve that goes through all of these guys, and it’s not linear. [Cubs president] Jed [Hoyer] says that a lot, too. It’s not going to happen at the same time for every guy.

“With Pete, it’s happened a little slower than what probably he expected or other people. But you’re seeing a really good, quality at-bat from a young player that doesn’t have a lot of big league time.”

He’s not there yet, but if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve seen some growth.

Because of his defensive prowess, Crow-Armstrong will continue to get mostly everyday playing time. The Cubs just want to keep seeing progress and improvements at the plate from him, and that’s what his work is geared toward accomplishing.

“Day in, day out, we’ve been working on how to get me being completely myself in the box and kind of unlocking the good parts of me as a hitter,” Crow-Armstrong said. “A lot of hand holding through that, but I’ve come a long way so far.”