The Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong hits his first career hit and home run as a two-run home run off Bryan Abreu #52 of the Houston Astros (not pictured) during the sixth inning at Wrigley Field on April 25.
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Cubs rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong flexed his chest as he jogged into home plate. He let out a shout toward teammate Miguel Amaya, who was waiting on the other side, hands held above his head for a high-ten.
For his first major-league hit, Crow-Armstrong had not only launched a two-run homer into the right-field bleachers, but he gave the Cubs a sixth-inning lead in a game they’d go on to win 3-1, sweeping the Astros.
Crow-Armstrong summed up the feeling in one word: “Freeing.”
In his second major-league stint, Crow-Armstrong came in this week with a foundation he didn’t have when he debuted last September. He went 0-for-14 in that stretch. And while the team’s top prospect showed flashes of brilliance on defense, his inexperience showed in several facets of the game, especially on the base paths.
“A lot feels pretty similar, considering a lot of the faces around me, but also it’s really good vibes again,” Crow-Armstrong said Wednesday after being recalled. “So I know how to play my role a little bit better now. I think I have a better understanding of how to be myself as well.”
It wasn’t as if he lost himself last time around — which was only a 13-game sample at a high-pressure time of year.
“You could say a bunch of different things, whether the situation got a little big, and maybe I shelled up compared to what I would normally feel on a baseball field, or whatever I’ve already deciphered in my brain,” he said. “I don’t think that I wasn’t myself, I just don’t think I was the best version of myself at that point last year.”
Even so, he left a strong impression.
“Just so impressed with how he handled things when he was up,” veteran shortstop Dansby Swanson said Thursday. “And how he was trying to help find little edges for us to win, and prepping the way that a real pro would, and just doing things that people would never see or really think that much about. But guys notice, and it makes an impact on them.”
Pete Crow-Armstrong’s first Major League hit is a homer! pic.twitter.com/oLy9RM7yIs
— MLB (@MLB) April 25, 2024
Crow-Armstrong spent most of the offseason in Arizona, working with hitting coach Dustin Kelly at the Cubs’ spring training complex. Crow-Armstrong and Kelly first sent each other clips of the rookie’s past swings, picking out ones they liked best, Crow-Armstrong told the Sun-Times this spring.
They agreed on three swings from a span of a couple weeks in High-A two years ago and went about replicating the feeling from that time, trying to find a the best starting position for him.
The offseason work didn’t show up in Crow-Armstrong’s early production at the plate. He was batting .203 in Triple-A when center fielder Cody Bellinger fractured two ribs jumping into the Wrigley Field wall, forcing the Cubs to make a roster move.
“I think it’s been really good for me, funny enough,” Crow-Armstrong said Wednesday night of the slump. “I think I can say that after two weeks of it too. But during, I felt pretty pretty all over the place, but it usually takes me a second to get my feet wet every year.”
His closeness with his Triple-A teammates, and their support as he struggled at the plate, helped him “zoom out.”
“What was so beautiful about [manager Craig Counsell] laying stuff out for me [Wednesday] was, at every level, I’ve come to find that winning really does make everything better,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And so if you’re going out there and making that your focus, then you could be scuffling at the plate like I was – or like I will – and it’ll be okay.”
Counsell laid out Crow-Armstrong’s role, stripped of the top-prospect pressure.
“He wants me and whoever else is coming up here to be ourselves, just because what we do best is going to help this team win ballgames,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And how you come to understand that is really important.”
After coming into Wednesday’s game as a defensive replacement, he was in the starting lineup Thursday for the first time this season.
Crow-Armstrong struck out twice against future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander. Then, against reliever Bobby Abreu, he took advantage of a fastball over the heart of the plate.
“To turn around a fastball like that on a day when pretty much everything in the air was going 30 feet shorter than it was supposed to,” said Nico Hoerner, “I mean, that ball is supposed to go out on the street almost, and it’s three rows deep — to hit a no-doubt homer on a day like that, incredibly impressive.”
A line of teammates and coaches waited for Crow-Armstrong in the dugout with their arms outstretched.
“That was by far the best part of that hit, that swing, all of that,” he said, “was getting to embrace the people who have been in my corner since all of them met me.”