Pete Crow-Armstrong Homers 3 Times After Sammy Sosa Prediction: Cubs Star’s MVP Case Grows
Sammy Sosa walked up to Pete Crow-Armstrong before Saturday’s game at Wrigley Field and told him he was going to hit three home runs. Then Pete Crow-Armstrong went out and hit three home runs. That is the kind of day the Cubs star is having in 2026.
Crow-Armstrong obliterated the Cincinnati Reds during Chicago’s 17-5 win, powering a lineup that has been the most fun in baseball for weeks. The three-homer show came on the same afternoon Sosa and other former Cubs greats were at the park for the club’s 150th anniversary celebration. The timing was cinematic.
“Sammy did say I was gonna hit 3 today,” Crow-Armstrong told Marquee Sports Network after the game. “Sammy Sosa told me I was gonna hit 3 and I hit 3. Put that on the record.”
Consider it on the record.
The 24-year-old also became the youngest player in Cubs history to hit three home runs in a single game, per Sarah Langs of MLB.com. He is now hitting .282/.377/.567 with 36 homers and 89 RBIs through 136 games, and the Cubs snapped a three-game skid to move to 77-59.
Anyone still holding out on Crow-Armstrong for NL MVP is running out of excuses. Shohei Ohtani is Shohei Ohtani, and that will always be part of the conversation, but the Dodgers just put out a concerning update on his health that clouds his stretch run. Meanwhile, Crow-Armstrong is playing elite center field defense, running the bases like a menace, and now stacking multi-homer games in nationally televised windows.
The MVP award is not a lifetime achievement prize. It is a snapshot of who was the best player right now, on the best story of the year, in a race the voters can feel. Right now that is Crow-Armstrong. The Cubs are in the middle of the pennant race. Their center fielder just hit three bombs on a day the franchise celebrated Sosa and 150 years of baseball on the North Side.
You cannot script it better than that.
What makes the performance stand out is that Crow-Armstrong barely resembles the player he was in the minor leagues. He was drafted as a defense-first, contact-first, low-power prospect. He arrived in the majors flashing the glove and the wheels, but the bat came slowly. He hit .123 across a small 2023 sample, then took a real jump in 2024, and now he has fully arrived. Thirty-six home runs was not on his college scouting report. He built this power.
He has done it while playing the toughest defensive position on the field at a Gold Glove level. That is the profile teams pay $300 million for on the open market. The Cubs have it on a rookie contract.
Sosa, for his part, has spent the last few years working his way back into the good graces of the Cubs organization after a long, complicated split. Being at Wrigley on the 150th anniversary was the punctuation on that reconciliation. Being right about Crow-Armstrong’s three home runs was the cherry on top.
There are a lot of stories in baseball right now. Injuries in Los Angeles. Trade fallout in Boston. The AL East grind. But nothing hits like a young player hitting three home runs at Wrigley on the day the franchise honors its history, then giving credit to the guy who called his shot in the tunnel. That is baseball.
Give Pete Crow-Armstrong the MVP.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
