The Baseball Writers Association of America announced Thursday that Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong has been named the National League’s Most Valuable Player. Shohei Ohtani and Brice Turang were the other finalists.
Crow-Armstrong snaps Ohtani’s streak of three consecutive MVP wins behind a massive season on both sides of the ball. The 24-year-old outfielder was easily the best player in baseball this year. He tied Kyle Schwarber for the major league lead with 45 home runs, adding 31 doubles and eight triples. His 84 extra-base hits easily led the NL, nine clear of Matt Olson in second place. He added 41 steals in 48 attempts, making him the only player in the majors this year to go 40-40. It’s one of seven such seasons in baseball history.
The accolades don’t stop there. Crow-Armstrong led qualified National League hitters with a .570 slugging percentage and .943 OPS. He batted .280/.372/.570 across an NL-leading 726 plate appearances. He led the majors with 119 runs scored and was third in the NL with 107 RBI. He and Turang were the only NL hitters to both score and drive in 100 runs this year.
This certainly didn’t come out of nowhere. Crow-Armstrong had played at an MVP level for the first few months of the 2025 season as well. His numbers tailed off at the end of that campaign as pitchers exploited his willingness to chase outside the strike zone, eventually finishing ninth in the voting. Crow-Armstrong is always likely to be an aggressive hitter, but he showed a more mature approach in his third big league season. He cut his chase rate by seven percentage points, made more contact, and more than doubled his walk rate to a strong 11.4% clip.
The run production alone would have made Crow-Armstrong the NL MVP favorite. He and AL MVP Yordan Alvarez were far and away the most valuable offensive players in baseball this year. Crow-Armstrong also happens to be the sport’s preeminent defensive outfielder — and quite arguably the best defender in baseball regardless of position. He won his second consecutive Gold Glove in center field and was named the NL Platinum Glove winner as the league’s best overall defender.
Crow-Armstrong played nearly 1400 innings in center field, where he tallied 16 Defensive Runs Saved and a staggering 25 Outs Above Average. Ceddanne Rafaela and Andy Pages were the only center fielders with a higher DRS total. Statcast considered Crow-Armstrong the best defensive player in MLB at any position. His +25 OAA tied 2017 Byron Buxton for the best season by an outfielder since that metric was introduced in 2016.
That production on both sides of the ball made this an easy decision for voters. Crow-Armstrong easily led all players in Wins Above Replacement at both Baseball Reference (9.8) and FanGraphs (10.6). That fWAR total would place it among the top 40 seasons by a position player in MLB history.
It takes that kind of performance to unseat Ohtani as the MVP favorite. The four-time winner played a two-way role for the first few months of 2026. He was in the early-season Cy Young conversation, working to a 1.79 ERA with 95 strikeouts across 85 2/3 innings. Ohtani took a monster .293/.403/.549 batting line into the All-Star Break, which looked as if it might set up an all-time MVP race. Unfortunately, his body didn’t cooperate down the stretch.
Ohtani didn’t pitch after July 3 because of a left knee injury. He continued to hit into August but also battled a right biceps issue that tanked his offensive production. Ohtani spent a couple weeks on the shelf in September and didn’t hit for any kind of power in the final six weeks of the regular season. He finished the season with a .275/.377/.512 slash line and 30 homers across 618 plate appearances. It was simultaneously Ohtani’s “worst” season since 2020 and a year that no one else in the last century-plus could’ve matched given his two-way production. It’s his sixth straight year as an MVP finalist.
Turang’s career-best season earns him his highest placement on MVP ballots. He’d finished 14th in the voting last year. Milwaukee’s star second baseman earned his second Gold Glove while batting .286/.366/.450 and topping 20 homers for the first time in his career. He stole 19 bases and tied for second in the NL with 37 doubles. Turang’s well-rounded production had him worth 6-7 WAR.
Crow-Armstrong is the Cubs’ first MVP winner since Kris Bryant in 2016. He’s the 11th different player in franchise history to win the award. It’s the team’s 12th win overall, as Ernie Banks won in consecutive seasons in 1958-59. The other honorees in club history were inaugural winner Frank Schulte (1911), Rogers Hornsby (1929), Gabby Hartnett (1935), Phil Cavarretta (1945), Hank Sauer (1952), Ryne Sandberg (1984), Andre Dawson (1987) and Sammy Sosa (1998).
Although Crow-Armstrong won the award within his first three full seasons, this does not have any implications for the Prospect Promotion Incentive. The Cubs would only have received a bonus draft pick had they carried him on their MLB roster for a full service year in his 2024 rookie season. They didn’t call him up until April 24 that year, keeping him just shy of that cutoff. They surely don’t have any regrets given the player he’s become and already locked him up on a $115MM extension to buy out a couple would-be free agent years this spring.
More to come.
Image courtesy of Patrick Gorski, Imagn Images.
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