Cubs rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong stuck out his chest before touching the 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-10.
For his first major-league hit, Crow-Armstrong launched a two-run home run into the right-field bleachers that gave the Cubs a sixth-inning lead in a 3-1 victory Thursday, capping a three-game sweep of the Astros.
Crow-Armstrong summed up the feeling in one word: “Freeing.”
For his second major-league stint, Crow-Armstrong came in with a foundation he didn’t have when he debuted last September. He went 0-for-14 during that stretch. And while the Cubs’ top prospect showed flashes of brilliance on defense, his inexperience was evident in several facets, especially on the basepaths.
“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,” 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 his past swings, picking out ones they liked best, Crow-Armstrong told the Sun-Times this spring.
They agreed on three swings from a couple of weeks in High-A two years ago and went about replicating the feeling from that time, trying to find 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 for Triple-A Iowa 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. I felt 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 OK.”
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 the game Wednesday 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 Bryan 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 second baseman Nico Hoerner, who went 3-for-5, “I mean, 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.”
