Pete Crow-Armstrong Adjusting to New Powers Like Young Superhero
If you didn’t already know otherwise, how many guesses would it take you to name Pete Crow-Armstrong as the Cubs’ leader in bat speed and exit velocity (both average and max)? Okay, maybe not many based on the way most of the hitters have been performing. And we already looked at how Michael Busch‘s bat speed is down, plus there’s been a lot out there about Alex Bregman likewise swinging slower. Nico Hoerner has never been that guy, so the field is narrow.
PCA’s 74.6 mph average bat speed puts him in the 80th percentile among his MLB peers, and his 91.8 mph average EV is in the 87th percentile. Those are not the kinds of metrics you might expect from a speedster who is perhaps generously listed at 6-foot even and 184 pounds. He packed on a little muscle over the winter with a little help from Caleb Williams, which is a contributing factor to a jump of roughly two ticks in each of the focal statistics here.
I know a lot of you may be thinking that bat speed and exit velocity are not the be-all and end-all, and you’re right. While swinging the bat fast creates a much better chance that you’ll hit the ball hard, which then increases the chances of a positive result, it matters little if you don’t make flush contact. One quick note on bat speed that I’ve brought up in the past is that its influence on batted-ball velocity is about six times greater than that of pitch speed.
Even if you think these metrics are a bunch of hooey — which they’re not, but whatever — I think we can all agree that making solid contact and hitting the ball hard are good things. We can also agree that changes in strength, mechanics, or approach can force adjustments. This is very prevalent in younger athletes who find themselves in new bodies every few months and may end up on a developmental hamster wheel as a result.
It can still happen at the highest level, as we’ve seen when the Cubs were forced to adjust to a significant uptick in breaking balls last month. Crow-Armstrong finds himself in the overlapping section of this Venn diagram, as he’s undergone some physical changes at the highest level, and it’s possible that his jump in bat speed was somewhat detrimental to him at the outset of the season.
Not only is he swinging the bat faster, but he’s also got a slightly longer swing. And though we’re only talking about incremental differences, these changes resulted in PCA making contact farther in front of the plate (7.3 inches) and farther from his center of mass (37.6 inches) than in the past. His intercept point was actually a tenth of an inch greater in 2023, but he also stood 10 inches shallower in the box at that point.
His tilt (35 degrees) and attack angle (15 degrees) have remained virtually identical over the last three seasons, so it really does come down to swinging harder and catching the ball slightly more out front. As such, starting his swing at the same time as he had in years past would result in him being just a wee bit early. That certainly seemed to be the case through April, but what we saw in May was a hitter who was more willing to let the ball travel.
PCA’s walk rate jumped from 7.0% in the first month-plus to 10.7% in May, easily the best mark of his career for any full month. Even though his batting average dipped, his OBP, slugging, ISO, wRC+, and hard-hit rate all rose significantly. Also up was his percentage of balls hit up the middle and oppo, a strong indication that he was indeed waiting back. That’s the kind of luxury afforded to those who swing the bat fast, as they can still do damage on balls that get a little deeper than usual.
We’ve typically talked about Crow-Armstrong’s elite body control and spatial awareness in terms of his god-tier defense in center, but now we’re seeing it play out at the plate. At the risk of twisting up some panties with an indirect comp, I’m reminded of the way late-career Ted Williams combatted the shift by switching to a heavier bat to cut down on his pull-heavy approach. When teams adjusted back, the Splended Splinter went with a lighter bat and beat them again.
The son of actors will probably always be a little more prone to histrionics than most, and he’s never going to lose his knack for the dramatic, but his most important facet is the ability to improvise. And at barely 24 years old, he’s still got plenty of physical and emotional growth left. That means more changes and subsequent adjustments as he tests the limits of his elite athleticism.
My final comp here is Mark Grayson, also known as the titular character Invincible from the animated Prime Video series based on the Image Comics series of the same name. Mark didn’t come into his full powers at an early age, so he had to work through some awkward periods as he grew into them and gained new abilities. The young superhero even had to deal with some PR issues along the way. That may fall flat with those unfamiliar with the material, but I think it’s quite fitting with what we’ve seen from PCA so far.
It’s not a stretch to say we’ve seen only glimpses of what this kid can do, nor is it unreasonable to believe he’ll never live up to the hype. Whether he exceeds or falls prey to expectations will come down to his continued ability to make those little adjustments as his powers grow.
