How Pete Crow-Armstrong Fell Into the Worst Slump in Baseball

The Cubs gave PCA $115 million in the offseason despite a deep slump that traces back to August. What’s gone wrong in Chicago?

Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong has been mired in a deep slump since last August. | Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images

The Cubs gave Pete Crow-Armstrong $115 million and he still can't buy his way out of the worst slump in baseball.

Chicago's center fielder was an MVP candidate during the first half of the 2025 season. The 24-year-old has a big left-handed swing and plays elite defense, and he looked like Chicago's next two-way star. By the end, he’d been playing like the worst hitter in baseball for a while, and months later, he's still a mess at the plate.

In 67 games since Aug. 2 of last season, Crow-Armstrong is slashing .195/.243/.290. The underlying metrics are even uglier.

Over that span, he’s posted a wRC+ of 47, the worst mark in baseball among the 149 hitters who qualify. Rockies outfielder Jordan Beck is next at 55. His .270 xwOBA ranks 145th, while his actual wOBA (.234) is also dead last. His .095 isolated power, a measure of raw power output, ranks 135th in MLB, while his .246 BABIP is 130th.

Crow-Armstrong’s approach seems to be at the heart of his decline. His 4.4% walk rate ranks 140th, well below the average of roughly 9%. And he’s been worth -15.9 runs above average according to Fangraphs, by far the worst mark in baseball. That’s a remarkable reversal of fortune after he burst onto the scene last year.

From Opening Day through Aug. 1, 2025, Crow-Armstrong played in 107 games and hit .273/309/.560 with 27 home runs, 31 doubles, four triples, 78 RBIs and 29 stolen bases. His 137 wRC+ and 5.4 fWAR were among the best in baseball, all while playing elite defense in center field.

Then everything fell apart.

In the final 50 games of the season, he slashed .185/.236/.289, with four home runs, six doubles, 17 RBIs, 51 strikeouts and nine walks. His wRC+ was 44, the worst in baseball.

The collapse didn't happen suddenly and shows no signs of stopping, apart from his three hits over the last two days. A mechanical issue in his swing can't fully explain it because the numbers point to something deeper.

Crow-Armstrong has 22 strikeouts and three walks in 17 games this season. | Kyle Ross-Imagn Images

Crow-Armstrong has always been a free swinger, but that tendency has now reached an extreme level. In 2025, he chased 41.4% of pitches outside the strike zone. This season, that number has jumped to 49.2%, putting him in the first percentile of chase rate league-wide. The league average is generally around 30%, a gap that helps explain his struggles. And that's only part of it.

Crow-Armstrong swung at 80.4% of pitches he saw in the strike zone in 2025. This season, that has dropped to 70.9%. He is chasing more pitches off the plate while being less aggressive on the ones he should be attacking. His strikeout rate has risen from 23.1% in his first 107 games of 2025 to 27.0% since then, and is up to 30.1% this season.

Crow-Armstrong’s struggles against breaking pitches help explain the collapse. In 2025, he slugged .716 on curveballs with a 21.5% whiff rate. This season, he’s slugging .286 against them, and his whiff rate has ballooned to 38.5%. He’s also whiffing more against sliders, at 42.9% this year versus 34.4% in 2025. Until he turns things around against breaking pitches, he can expect to see a heavy diet of them.

The big question is whether the Cubs paid for a version of Crow-Armstrong that never truly existed. His rookie numbers from 2024 look nothing like the MVP candidate from early 2025. That year, he slashed .237/.286/.384 and a wRC+ of 86. His xwOBA (.286), wOBA (.289), and ISO (.148) from that season align much more closely with what he’s doing now than the heights he reached last spring and summer. The first half of 2025 may have been the anomaly. This might be who he is.

Crow-Armstrong is only 24, and players have certainly recovered from deeper holes than this. If he cleans up his approach, this is theoretically fixable. But there’s a chance Chicago is paying for a player whose best two-thirds of a season were a mirage.

The Cubs gave Crow-Armstrong $115 million and a strong vote of confidence. Right now, neither is paying off.

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