2025 Breakout Candidate: Cubs Center Fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong

The last two months of 2024 for Pete Crow-Armstrong were sensational. The question going into 2025 is whether or not he can prove, over a full season, that the second half of last year is more of the kind of player he will be for the Chicago Cubs.

If he does that, we might just be in for a breakout year for the player known as “PCA.”

Crow-Armstrong has lived the ups and downs of breaking into the big leagues. There were his first few weeks up in September 2023 with the Cubs, when he went hitless in 19 plate appearances and seemed overmatched at the plate.

Then, over his first 195 plate appearances of 2024 (through July 26), things didn’t look much better. He hit just .180, posting a .523 OPS and a 48 wRC+.

But his first 63 games of ’24 didn’t tell the whole story.

After adding a leg kick to his swing toward the end of July, his numbers dramatically improved.

Over his last 215 plate appearances (57 games), he hit .289 with an .806 OPS and a 123 wRC+. He went from someone who looked lost on an entire side of the ball to a strong hitter. He was worth 2.2 Wins Above Replacement (FanGraphs) from July 27 to the end of the year — the 19th-highest mark in all of baseball during that season-ending stretch.

“I needed the reps and the experience. I needed the on-field time, and I’m really glad I got it,” Crow-Armstrong said at the end of last season. “It was a really good year of just learning myself as a big leaguer, learning how people are going to attack and adjust to you and learning how to attack and adjust to everybody else.”

It’s obviously not easy to go through the struggles he did. You’re talking about three or so months of poor performance at the plate. That’s not easy to deal with for anyone, let alone a 22-year-old trying to find his way in the majors.

But a part of Crow-Armstrong finds some positives through the issues. Part of him can acknowledge that going through it is, in a way, beneficial. Baseball is a game of constant adjustments, and struggling helped him figure out how to get things back on track.

“I’m glad I sucked for a long time,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I’m not glad that it wasn’t a productive stint. I felt like I didn’t contribute much, and that was kind of the hardest part of digging out of the hole was getting over my lack of contribution and just trusting that, in time, it would come.”

Now, it’s about keeping the offensive performance consistently closer to where he was over the last two months of 2024.

There of course will be adjustments he has to make at the plate as the opposition adjusts to him. That’ll be the case for the rest of his career. But finding a way to consistently perform at a level on par with where he was in the last two months of 2024 is the focus.

“It started this offseason of like, ‘Hey, we’re not making any swing changes. We’re going to kind of continue with what we picked up with in July,'” Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly said. “And now, it just becomes how consistent, how easy can we make this game and slow the game down as much as we can?

“He’s shown that he can do it. He’s going to have to make adjustments, but we’re not going to go too far from where we know he’s supposed to be.”

Even without the bat, Crow-Armstrong should still be impactful.

In 2024, his sprint speed was in the 99th percentile (30 ft/sec, per Statcast). He had a 98th-percentile Baserunning Run Value (6). He went 27-for-30 (90%) on stolen base attempts. As long as he’s getting on base, his baserunning acumen is a big asset to the Cubs’ offense.

And of course, Crow-Armstrong is a standout defender. That’s the side on which he’s seemingly already broken out.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweeting “PCA is an absolute madman in center field” after his game-ending home-run robbery in Los Angeles on Sept. 10, almost exactly a year to the day of his MLB debut, might help spell that out.

Then you have his Fielding Run Value (16, 99th percentile), his range (14 Outs Above Average, 97th percentile), his arm value (4, 98th percentile), his arm strength (93 mph, 96th percentile) and a host of other defensive metrics and stats screaming to you that he’s an elite defender. He’s absolutely Gold Glove-caliber. It should shock no one if he wins a few during his career.

All of that can certainly make him a valuable player for the Cubs. There’s a reason they gave him so much runway last season. There’s a reason that, barring something unforeseen, he’s the starter in center field on Opening Day.

Crow-Armstrong is a big part of the Cubs’ future. He’s had that kind of hype since they first traded for him at the 2021 deadline. A year-and-change into his career now, he’s proved his value on defense and on the bases alone.

To keep moving up tiers in the big leagues, though, his bat has to play. That could take him from electrifying youngster to All-Star level, and maybe even higher. That’s how you become the face of a team that hopes to emerge in 2025.

Crow-Armstrong will have to prove he can keep up his offensive turnaround. If he can, we might be looking at a real breakout year for the Cubs’ young center fielder.