Pete Crow-Armstrong Joins Baseball's 40-40 Club as Cubs Clinch Playoff Spot

Pete Crow-Armstrong stole second base on the first pitch he saw in the bottom of the first inning Thursday afternoon at Wrigley Field, and with that one step he joined one of the smallest fraternities in baseball. The Chicago Cubs center fielder's 40th steal of the season, paired with the 45 home runs he already had banked, made him the seventh player in major-league history to reach 40 homers and 40 stolen bases in the same season — and the first in the Cubs franchise's 150-year history.

The moment arrived quietly, almost as a formality. Crow-Armstrong drew a leadoff walk off Miami Marlins right-hander Tyler Phillips, then took off for second on the very next pitch, beating the throw easily. The Cubs went on to beat the Marlins 2-1, a result that by night's end had done more than pad Crow-Armstrong's statistical line: it clinched Chicago's second consecutive playoff berth.

What happened

Matthew Boyd carried the Cubs for seven innings, allowing just one run while the offense searched for its footing against Phillips. Seiya Suzuki's solo home run in the fifth tied the score, and in the sixth, Ian Happ led off with a triple and scored on a go-ahead single from Nico Hoerner. Boyd's length let Chicago hold back key relievers with a doubleheader in Boston looming two days later, and the bullpen made the 2-1 lead stand.

Crow-Armstrong's individual milestone landed in the middle of that low-scoring, businesslike win — no curtain call, no long delay for a video board tribute, just a stolen base that had been building all season finally arriving on a Thursday afternoon in front of a home crowd. He finished the day with 45 home runs and 40 stolen bases, with the Cubs' magic number for a playoff berth sitting at one before the game and disappearing by the final out.

The numbers

Crow-Armstrong, 24, enters the season's final weekend hitting .280/.374/.577 with 31 doubles, eight triples, 107 RBIs and 119 runs scored, leading all of Major League Baseball in runs, total bases and wins above replacement, according to MLB.com's account of the achievement. He also leads the National League in slugging percentage, OPS and OPS-plus, and a Fox Sports breakdown of the milestone put his WAR total among the highest in franchise history. His defensive reputation, built on a Gold Glove a year ago, has held: he has been credited with 16 defensive runs saved in center field this season.

• 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
• Pete Crow-Armstrong, Chicago Cubs, 2026 — 45 HR, 40 SB

Three of the six players who came before him — Canseco, Acuña and Ohtani — went on to win the Most Valuable Player award in the same season they reached 40-40, a detail that has followed Crow-Armstrong through the closing weeks of the schedule as the National League MVP conversation has narrowed, as CBS Sports noted in its own recap of the achievement.

How he got here

The Cubs acquired Crow-Armstrong from the New York Mets at the 2021 trade deadline, in the deal that sent infielder Javier Báez to New York. He was a well-regarded prospect who reached the majors in 2024 and spent that first full season still finding his power stroke, finishing with 10 home runs. The leap since then has been steep: a 30-30 season a year ago gave way this year to a 40-40 one, built on the same aggressive baserunning and increasingly disciplined swing that scouts had projected but that rarely arrives on this exact timeline.

It has come against a backdrop of upheaval on the pitching side that the Cubs' front office has openly called unprecedented. According to the Chicago Sun-Times' reporting on the clinch, the Cubs at one stretch had their entire projected starting rotation and late-inning relief corps on the injured list simultaneously. Third baseman Alex Bregman has been playing through facial fractures suffered on a foul ball, and rotation anchor Kevin Gausman missed extended time with a shoulder injury. Crow-Armstrong's all-around production is a significant reason the Cubs are returning to the postseason despite that attrition.

Who is affected

The win keeps the Chicago Cubs in the postseason for a second straight year, but the clinch does not settle where the team will play in October. They enter the final weekend tied with the Philadelphia Phillies for the second National League wild-card spot, one game behind the San Diego Padres, according to the official MLB.com wild-card standings. Chicago holds tiebreakers over both rivals, but the difference between finishing as the top wild card and the third is the difference between hosting a best-of-three series at Wrigley Field and opening the playoffs on the road against the NL East champion Atlanta Braves. The Cubs still have to get through an unusual scheduling wrinkle first: a doubleheader at Boston on Friday, a makeup of an earlier postponement, before the wild-card round opens Tuesday.

For Crow-Armstrong personally, the achievement adds concrete weight to an MVP case that has been building around his combination of power, speed and defense at a premium position. He is one of six players in the sport's history — and the only Cub — to have done what he did on Thursday, a distinction that stands regardless of how the seeding shakes out over the final games.

Reaction

Crow-Armstrong, who has become known in the Cubs' clubhouse for playing down individual numbers in favor of team results, framed the milestone as an extension of a difficult season rather than a personal landmark.

"We have taken a lot of hits this year. We're built for the weird stuff," Crow-Armstrong said, according to the Sun-Times, describing the Cubs' response to the season's run of injuries.

Boyd, who threw seven innings to set up the clinching win, was similarly quick to turn the conversation toward what remains ahead. "It's all about what's next," he said. "We want to host games at Wrigley. We've got to take care of our business." Left fielder Ian Happ added that grinding through a full 162-game slate under the circumstances the Cubs faced had itself been an achievement: "Getting through 162 isn't easy. This group has a lot of belief in what's to come over the next month."

What happens next

The Cubs close the regular season with that doubleheader in Boston on Friday and a limited number of games after, all of which will determine their exact wild-card seed. A finish atop the wild-card standings means a home series at Wrigley Field beginning Tuesday; anything less sends Chicago on the road for the best-of-three round, with the loser eliminated. Crow-Armstrong's status as a first-time All-Star in each of the last two seasons and a likely top finisher in NL MVP voting will be decided separately, after the schedule ends, but his case now carries a statistical distinction that only six players before him have held.