CHICAGO -- As Pete Crow-Armstrong walked slowly back to his position in center field, his uniform covered in dirt from the warning track, the fans in the bleachers behind the Cubs star began a chant of support in response to his effort in the seventh inning on Friday.
Crow-Armstrong rested his hands on his knees as the familiar call of “P-C-A!” continued for a few moments. In a 3-2 loss to the Pirates, the Cubs center fielder rattled off three hits and drove in a run, but he also made two aggressive mistakes on the bases and -- knowing his personal standards -- probably felt a near-impossible catch should have been completed.
“He’s a competitor,” Cubs left fielder Ian Happ said. “We wouldn’t have been in that game without him.”
Since the calendar flipped to August, Chicago’s offense has been in a team-wide slump, including an extremely cold turn from Crow-Armstrong out of the heart of the lineup. He has 27 homers, 30 steals and an .820 OPS overall this year and posted a .985 OPS from July 1-Aug. 1. Since that date, Crow-Armstrong had hit .053 (2-for-38 with two singles in a 10-game span, entering Friday.
In the hours leading up to Friday’s matinee against Pittsburgh, the 23-year-old outfielder spent some time in the office of manager Craig Counsell.
Crow-Armstrong said taking some time to have conversations with Counsell is nothing new -- he enjoys the perspective and support the manager consistently provides. In this instance, Counsell said it was a bit of a continuation of a recent chat they had in Toronto, where the manager posed a simple question: “What did you learn this week?”
Even as Crow-Armstrong ranks second to Shohei Ohtani in the National League in fWAR (5.5) and is closing in on joining Sammy Sosa (1993 and ‘95) as the only Cubs in history with 30 homers and 30 steals in a season, there are lessons to be gained. One thing Counsell and veteran teammates have emphasized is finding other ways to help when the bat goes quiet.
“Those are great lessons to learn,” Counsell said. “And it’s part of being a better player.”
That is easy enough to say, but it is hard to not try to force the issue when a team is in a pressure-packed playoff hunt.
“There becomes the self-inflicted pressure,” Crow-Armstrong said before Friday’s game, “when you feel like you’re not playing your part and contributing. At the end of the day, I think that’s a bit of a more selfish approach. As Counse has been able to remind me -- [Justin Turner], whoever I’ve talked to -- it’s always just about what else I have to offer.
“Again, that’s the hard part about this game, you may not be getting the action in center field, feeling like you contribute. You may not be making the right decisions on the basepaths, which I have kind of showed recently. So when stuff starts to kind of pile up like that, it’s sucked.”
In the second inning, Crow-Armstrong ripped a pitch from Pirates righty Braxton Ashcraft into the right-field corner for a double. That was his first extra-base hit since Aug. 1. In the fourth, he sent a two-out single to right to score Seiya Suzuki, pulling the game into a 1-1 tie. Crow-Armstrong was thrown out at second trying to pull off a hustle double on the play.
In the top of the seventh, Isiah Kiner-Falefa drilled a pitch from Cubs reliever Ryan Brasier to the track in left-center for an RBI double. Per Statcast, Crow-Armstrong reached an elite sprint speed of 29.8 ft/sec and covered 94 feet in 4.8 seconds with a jump that was 4.9 feet above average. But his dive was short and Crow-Armstrong banged up a knee on the play. He needed to cover 100 feet on a play with a 5% catch probability.
Crow-Armstrong was then hit by a pitch in the seventh and eventually scored on a sacrifice fly from Matt Shaw. And in the ninth, the center fielder singled again -- his three hits equaling his total for all of August prior to Friday -- but was then thrown out on a steal of second after he slid over the base. It was a critical out as the Cubs tried to create a late comeback.
“If we’ve got Pete Crow-Armstrong on first, we’re going to run,” Counsell said. “It’s a risk, of course. And that’s what happens with the risk, unfortunately. But I think we’ll always try to be aggressive in that situation.”
And even with the few missteps, it was closer to the version of Crow-Armstrong the Cubs had powering their offense for the first few months.
“Pete played a really good baseball game today,” Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner said. “There’s nothing to change on his end.”