Crow-Armstrong nears rare 40-40 season as Cubs push toward October

Pete Crow-Armstrong went 1-for-4 with a walk and an RBI single in the Chicago Cubs' 6-5 win over the Miami Marlins on Saturday night, a modest line by the standards he has set all summer but one that still left the 24-year-old center fielder one home run and seven stolen bases from a season only six players in major league history have completed. With three weeks left in the regular season, Crow-Armstrong's pursuit of the 40-homer, 40-steal club has become the most closely watched individual chase in baseball, entwined with a Cubs team trying to hold a National League Wild Card lead and an MVP race that has turned in his favor.

Saturday's win was built on more than Crow-Armstrong's single. Michael Conforto homered and singled, Nico Hoerner had three hits, and Ian Happ drove in two runs as the Cubs piled up 13 hits against Miami starter Edward Cabrera. Ryan Rolison worked the final outs of the seventh and eighth innings for the win, and Ryan Zeferjahn closed it out for his fifth save, stranding the tying run at third base in the ninth. The Cubs finish their series against Miami on Sunday afternoon before flying to Milwaukee for a three-game set that will do much to decide the NL Central, giving Crow-Armstrong a stage no less prominent than the milestone itself.

The numbers behind the chase

Through Saturday's games, Crow-Armstrong is hitting .279 with 39 home runs, 94 RBIs, 33 stolen bases and a .943 OPS that ranks first in the National League, according to his official MLB.com player page, which also credits him with the league lead in slugging percentage (.568) and total bases. He has played in 143 games, the most of any National League position player this season, a durability streak that has kept the 40-40 math in play even as the calendar turns to September.

• Jose Canseco, Oakland Athletics, 1988 (42 HR, 40 SB)
• Barry Bonds, San Francisco Giants, 1996 (42 HR, 40 SB)
• Alex Rodriguez, Seattle Mariners, 1998 (42 HR, 46 SB)
• Alfonso Soriano, Washington Nationals, 2006 (46 HR, 41 SB)
• Ronald Acuña Jr., Atlanta Braves, 2023 (41 HR, 73 SB)
• Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers, 2024 (54 HR, 59 SB)

No Cubs player has ever reached 40-40; Sammy Sosa, the franchise's home run icon, twice reached 30-30 in the 1990s but never combined 40 of each. Crow-Armstrong would also be doing it as a center fielder who has already won a Gold Glove, a combination of power, speed and plus defense that has no real precedent among the six men who came before him, most of whom were corner outfielders or infielders by the time they got there.

The math still requires some cooperation from the calendar. Crow-Armstrong has stolen 33 bases in 143 games, a shade under a quarter of a base per game, and needs seven more in the Cubs' final 19 contests to get to 40 — a modest uptick in pace but not an automatic one, since stolen-base opportunities depend on who reaches ahead of him and how often Chicago is running with a game in hand. The home run side of the ledger looks more comfortable: he has hit 39 in 143 games and needs only one more, a pace that suggests he could clear that bar within his next handful of starts.

Both of the club's most recent members played under rules — larger bases and a cap on pickoff attempts, introduced in 2023 — that made basestealing easier than it was for Canseco or Bonds in the 1980s and 1990s. Crow-Armstrong is chasing the number under those same conditions, though his stolen-base total, unlike Acuña's 73, has stayed close enough to 40 that the milestone is not a foregone conclusion.

From glove-first prospect to MVP contender

Crow-Armstrong's path to this point has been unusual. The Mets selected him 19th overall in the 2020 draft out of Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, and he arrived in Chicago in July 2021 as the return in the trade that sent shortstop Javier Báez and pitcher Trevor Williams to the Mets. He was regarded almost entirely as a defensive prospect for most of his minor league career, a glove that would have to drag an uncertain bat to the majors.

That reputation has been dismantled over the past two seasons. Crow-Armstrong made his big-league debut in September 2023, and by 2025 he had become the first Cub to reach 30 homers and 30 steals in a season since Sammy Sosa, earning his first All-Star selection and a Gold Glove in center field. This year he has gone further: a cycle against Colorado in June, a three-home-run game against Cincinnati in late August, and now, according to his career record, a second consecutive 30-30 season achieved on a walk-off home run — the first time any Cubs player has done that in back-to-back years.

A race that runs through Milwaukee

The chase does not exist in a vacuum. The Cubs are 81-62 and hold the top position in the National League Wild Card standings, six games clear of the Philadelphia Phillies, but they remain nine games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central. That deficit is what sends Chicago into Milwaukee for a three-game series beginning Monday, a set that carries real division stakes even with a Wild Card spot largely secured. Crow-Armstrong's home run and stolen base totals will be tracked inning by inning against the team chasing the same division title.

He is also, at the moment, the favorite for the National League Most Valuable Player award, a race that has tightened against four-time winner Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers as Ohtani's season has cooled in September. Crow-Armstrong has downplayed the attention.

"I definitely appreciate it. I got some last year. And I don't look into all that much. It's obviously a really cool thing to hear. But I'm not, yet," Crow-Armstrong said when asked about MVP chants at Wrigley Field.

Manager Craig Counsell, who has managed Crow-Armstrong's transformation from glove-first outfielder to middle-of-the-order threat, has been similarly restrained in public even as he has praised the underlying skill. "He's just a threat. He's a tough, tough at-bat for the pitcher in all ways," Counsell has said of his center fielder this season, a description that has only grown more accurate as the power numbers have climbed.

What happens next

Crow-Armstrong will get one more chance at Miami on Sunday before the Cubs' schedule turns to Milwaukee, then home for series against Pittsburgh and Atlanta in the middle of the month. With 19 games left in the regular season, the Cubs' front office and coaching staff have given no indication they will manage his workload down given the stakes of both the division race and his personal chase; he has appeared in more games than any other NL position player this year and shows no sign of needing rest.

Barring injury, most projections built on his current pace have him reaching 40 home runs within one to two weeks. The stolen-base total is the tighter number, and one that depends partly on how often the Cubs need him running with the score close in September. If he gets there, Crow-Armstrong would join a club that has admitted exactly one member per decade on average since 1988, and would give the Cubs a piece of individual history to go with a season they hope ends the same way last year's did: back in October, this time with the outfielder who has carried them there all summer.