Pete Crow-Armstrong was three hits into a cycle. Then he ran the Cubs out of the inning, the moment, and a chance at history.
The 23-year-old Cubs center fielder pulled off one of the wildest single-game collapses you will ever see on Monday night in Cincinnati. He hit a single, a double, and a triple in his first three at-bats. He was 90 feet from completing baseball’s most exciting individual feat. And then he got picked off second base.
Yes. Picked off second base. With a chance to hit for the cycle. In a one-run game.
The video is brutal. Crow-Armstrong leans the wrong way as Reds pitcher Hunter Greene throws over to second. He takes one extra step toward third, gets caught, and lopes back to the bag too late. Tag. Out. Inning over. Cubs lose the rally.
This is the kind of mistake you see in Single-A, not from one of the most exciting young center fielders in baseball. Crow-Armstrong knows it too. He sat in the dugout afterward staring at the ground for nearly three minutes.
Manager Craig Counsell tried to play it cool postgame, but the frustration was obvious. “He has been one of the smartest baserunners on this team. That is not a play we expect from him,” Counsell said. Translation: I am livid and I will deal with this internally.
The Cubs lost the game 4-3 thanks to a ninth-inning rally from the Reds. Crow-Armstrong never got another at-bat to try to complete the cycle. He grounded out his fourth time up before the pickoff.
For Cubs fans, this is the kind of moment that defines a season. Chicago is hovering around .500 and trying to figure out if it can hang in the wild card race. The lineup needs production from PCA, and most nights it gets it. But these baserunning errors have been a recurring problem. He leads the National League in pickoffs.
That is the asterisk on what otherwise has been a breakout year. Crow-Armstrong is hitting .284 with 16 home runs, 22 stolen bases, and Gold Glove level defense in center. He is going to make the All-Star team. He is going to get MVP votes. He is also going to be in nightly text chains between scouts who cannot believe how often he runs himself into outs.
The good news is he is 23 years old. The base running can be coached. The instincts in the outfield, the bat speed, the power potential, all of that is real and improving every month.
The Cubs need him to clean it up though. Every wild card race in October ends up turning on one or two games that should not have been losable. This was one of them. The Reds did not win that game. Pete Crow-Armstrong handed it to them.
Hitting for the cycle is rare. The last Cub to do it was Anthony Rizzo in 2018. PCA had history in his hands. He let it slip away in the worst possible way.
It is a learning moment. The question is whether Pete Crow-Armstrong learns from it before October arrives.
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.
