There’s plenty of speed to go around between Pete Crow-Armstrong and Shohei Ohtani, a couple of baseball’s elite base-stealers.
But their race for the NL MVP is looking less like a race and more like a heavyweight fight.
The duo took turns delivering haymakers Wednesday, with each guy homering twice in a classic between the Cubs and Dodgers, Crow-Armstrong setting himself up as very much a legitimate challenger to Ohtani, the once-in-forever two-way star who’s won four MVP awards in the last five years.
“Today showed that both of them are superstars,” Cubs lefty starter Shota Imanaga said, “especially Pete.
“Being able to play with him, be teammates with him, that’s such an honor. Once I’m done playing baseball, I’m going to talk about the fact that I got to play with such a great player.”
Ohtani started another season as the obvious favorite to win another MVP, just like his Dodgers started another season as the obvious favorites to win another World Series.
But the Cubs spent three days proving themselves challengers to the Dodgers’ throne, playing high-quality, all-around baseball in a sweep of the back-to-back champs, finishing things off with a 7-6 win Wednesday.
And Crow-Armstrong, as he’s done all season, was right in the middle of everything. That includes the MVP conversation with the best baseball player on the planet.
Can Crow-Armstrong dethrone Ohtani? Can the Cubs dethrone the Dodgers?
“Simply put, just having your name in the same conversation as someone as profound as he feels, it’s awesome and it’s a nice nod,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I would feel much more accomplished taking [the Dodgers] down at some point.
“I want to see this [Cubs] group in October because I think it will be a dangerous, dangerous group in the playoffs.”
If Wednesday was a preview of what a Cubs-Dodgers series might look like in the postseason, fans are in for a treat.
Ohtani led off the game with a homer, only for Crow-Armstrong to answer with a homer in the bottom of the first inning. Crow-Armstrong followed with an RBI double and a home run launched off the right-field video board as the Cubs built a six-run lead.
Ohtani came up clutch, capping a five-run Dodgers eighth with a homer that shaved the Cubs’ lead to the minimum, only for Jacob Webb to shut the door with his second 1-2-3 ninth in as many days.
“You know it’s going to be tough to beat them. You know it’s not going to happen easily,” manager Craig Counsell said. “We’re playing good baseball. We played good baseball in all facets. To beat them three times, it’s not one or the other, it’s got to be everything.”
Ohtani is still doing things that have never been done before. While health concerns have limited him to only 14 starts this season, he’s been spectacular when on the mound, with a 1.79 ERA that ranks second in baseball among pitchers who have thrown at least 80 innings.
Meanwhile, Crow-Armstrong is making nightly highlight-reel plays in center field, showing he’s perhaps the best defender in the sport, coming into Wednesday the league-leader in both Outs Above Average (22) and Fielding Run Value (24).
As they both rack up best-in-baseball type offensive numbers, too, their impacts beyond the batter’s box could wind up the difference in who takes home the hardware at season’s end.
Looks like Crow-Armstrong – whose 7.5 fWAR led baseball entering Wednesday – is going to have to take his game to another place if he’s going to find an edge.
“If you guys want to talk about all this back and forth,” he said, “I really should get in the lab and start pitching. I really should.”
Who knows how the playoff bracket will line up, but an October rematch would be must-see TV, with Cubs vs. Dodgers – and Crow-Armstrong vs. Ohtani – looking like the game’s latest and greatest heavyweight fight.
Will it be “down goes Ohtani” in the MVP race? How about “down go the Dodgers” in the playoffs?
For three days in August, Crow-Armstrong and the Cubs made it look like they could be the ones to deliver a knockout punch.