How Pete Crow-Armstrong Put It All Together

The Glaring Flaw: Plate Discipline

If there’s one flaw that held PCA back during his 2025 season, it was his inability to be patient in the box.

To put it simply, he swung at everything. From 2023-2025, PCA chased at 41.2% of outside pitches, the seventh-highest rate among 302 hitters to see at least 1,500 pitches outside the strike zone in that time. He also swung at 80.7% of in-zone pitches, the second-highest on the same list. For the first three years of his career, he hardly saw a pitch he didn’t like.

PCA’s on-base percentage suffered as a result of this. Even during his excellent 2025 season, his .287 OBP was tied for 10th-lowest among 145 qualifiers. His 4.5% walk rate was fifth-lowest on the same list. Interestingly enough, PCA turned out the only season in baseball history with over 5.5 bWAR and an OBP below .290. While that goes to show how effective his defense and power can be, it also leaves into question what he could do with a better walk rate.

2026 has helped answer that question. PCA’s 11.5% walk rate is neatly triple what it was last season. As his manager Craig Counsell puts it, it’s made a world of difference.

“I think if you’re just looking at a pure number, like what’s changed, like it’s that it’s that it’s the plate discipline,” Counsell told Just Baseball. “It’s just made him so much more dangerous to pitchers.”

The numbers support this claim. PCA has lowered his chase rate from 41.7% last year down to 33.9% this year. Although it’s still 5.5% above the major league average, any improvement is accepted. His overall swing rate has dipped nearly 11%, the steepest decline in the league. This allows him to work deeper into counts, helping extend the walk rate.

In 2025, PCA averaged 3.56 pitches seen per plate appearance. This year, it’s up to 3.97, landing above the league average of 3.88 for the first time in his career.

“Last year there was many places that the pitcher could go,” Counsell said, “And there’s just way less this year.”

The pathway to another step up for PCA required better plate discipline instead of the worst in the league. For sliders in the dirt or fastballs above the zone to not be the sure thing they once were has been a devastating development for opposing pitchers.

No Safe Options

In 2025, PCA, despite his solid overall numbers, struggled against the pitches most commonly thrown to him. In 176 plate appearances ending in four-seam fastballs, he hit .180 with a 34.7% K%, the highest among the 148 hitters with at least 150 PAs ending against four-seamers. He was not any more effective against sliders, hitting .231 with a .190 xBA and a 29.7% K%. This year, things have been much different.

Like his manager mentioned earlier, much of what worked against PCA earlier no longer works. With 2.5 weeks remaining in the 2026 regular season, he may slug over .600 against both pitches.

Of course, PCA has become more disciplined against both pitches, especially sliders. Last year, he swung at 48.5% of sliders outside the strike zone, the 14th-highest rate among the 868 seasons throughout the 2020s with at least 150 outside sliders faced. In 2026, he’s chopped the chase rate down to 35.9%.

Against four-seamers, he’s cut his chase rate from 34.3% to 21.4%, two percentage points below the major league average. He went from having 33.4% of his swings against four-seamers come against pitches out of the zone to just 22.4% between seasons.

Fixing Last Year’s Issues

PCA went into the 2025 All-Star break slashing .265/.302/.544 and becoming a clear superstar in the league. The second half, however, knocked him back down. He finished the season by slashing .216/.262/.372 in his final 62 games. The odd thing was, it wasn’t super clear where the problems were under the hood.

His pulled air rate had actually gone up in the second half. His overall batted-ball profile didn’t go through any significant change. His chase rate had gone down. His K% and BB% remained consistent. His barrel rate was only down 4%. It was hard to pinpoint what was causing such a steep and sudden decline, except for one thing.

In the first half of the 2025 season, PCA’s fly balls had an average exit velocity of 94.9 mph, two mph above the major league average. In the second half, it dropped down to 90.6 mph, enough to turn homers into balls that died at the warning track. This change made PCA go from slugging 1.137 on fly balls in the first half to .776 in the second half, nearly 70 points lower than the league average.

This is where Crow-Armstrong has corrected his shortcomings from the previous season. In the second half of this year, PCA’s fly balls have an average exit velocity of 97.3 mph, the seventh-highest among the 201 hitters with at least 25 fly balls in the second half this season.

Because of this, PCA’s HR/FB% has jumped from 24.4% in the first half to 33.3% in the second half.

It took a mixture of improvements and developments to get to this version of PCA. But with a better eye, more diverse pitch-type skillset, and harder fly balls, Pete Crow-Armstrong is staring down a 10-win season and on the brink of dethroning Shohei Ohtani for the NL MVP award. As the Cubs make their way toward another playoff run, these are the things to look out for in their star center fielder.