Regardless of how his career turns out, Chicago Cubs superstar Pete Crow-Armstrong may already have Mike Trout beat in one key category: playoff games.
Both are still seeking their first Championship Series appearance, but at least PCA had another opportunity this week. Any hopes the Cubs had of advancing beyond the Wild Card Round ended fairly quickly, though, with the presumptive NL MVP being held hitless in eight at-bats against the Padres.
Crow-Armstrong’s dreadful two-game performance follows him hitting .184 with 12 strikeouts over eight playoff games last year.
“You can look at the scoreboard, you can look at the stat sheet, wherever you get your numbers from, and it is clear to see that I didn’t contribute,” he told reporters. “None of it feels good. Pretty disappointed in myself, but that’s for me to work on.”
Given the current state of baseball’s labor crisis, he’ll likely have plenty of additional time to reflect on what went wrong.
Should Chicago Cubs fans be concerned by Pete Crow-Armstrong’s playoff struggles?
Some of the more generous PCA-related social media posts have involved questioning his MVP status or accusing him of being overrated. Right, because someone who just put up nearly 10 bWAR and joined the 40-40 club is overrated.
This will sound crazy, but Crow-Armstrong is still only 24. He’s already become one of the sport’s premier faces to the point that we wouldn’t be shocked if he’s on the cover of next year’s MLB The Show game. We talk so much about New York and Los Angeles that we forget he’s thrived in the Chicago media market, which isn’t exactly a bunch of villages and huts in the middle of nowhere.
Anyone who blames Crow-Armstrong for the Cubs’ playoff loss is deliberately being lazy. Alex Bregman, Dansby Swanson and Ian Happ all went hitless in the series themselves. They managed one run over 18 innings.
Credit to the Padres for keeping Crow-Armstrong off the basepaths, which should sound obvious enough. But he drew walks in nearly 12 percent of his plate appearances during the regular season yet only managed a single free pass this week.
Analysts constantly referenced Trout’s 1-for-12 showing in the 2014 ALDS — still his lone postseason appearance — because he and the Angels still haven’t returned to the playoffs. That’s why no one even bothers bringing it up anymore; we’ve just collectively gotten used to the Angels finishing in or near last place.
Do you remember who else had a reputation as a poor postseason performer? Alex Rodriguez, a narrative that vanished when the Yankees won the 2009 World Series. The talk surrounding Aaron Judge’s October struggles will vanish if he catches the final out of the Fall Classic.
Let’s give Crow-Armstrong some more time. Besides, the Cubs are only 10 years into a title drought rather than 108. Things could be far worse.
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