He’s young and seems to be able to handle it, but…
Pete Crow-Armstrong, following Wednesday night’s action, has played 502⅔ innings in 2025.
That’s every inning of all 56 games the Cubs have played so far this year.
Only one player in MLB has played more innings — Jarren Duran of the Red Sox, 506 innings, and that’s not every inning of every Red Sox game. The Red Sox have played two more games and 18⅓ innings more than the Cubs (Boston has played 11 extra-inning games, the Cubs six), accounting for the difference. So Duran has been given some innings off, and has played in 57 of the 58 Red Sox games.
Three other MLB players besides PCA have played every inning of all their team’s games — three members of the Braves, Matt Olson, Austin Riley and Ozzie Albies.
PCA is just 23 and seems to have boundless energy, and hasn’t seemed to slow down defensively or offensively with this workload. That’s partly because the Cubs have had quite a number of off days over the season’s first two months, given to them in part because of the trip to Japan. The most consecutive days the Cubs have played this year is seven, and that was the initial North American road trip to Arizona and Sacramento. The Cubs did all right there, going 5-2.
The Cubs don’t have a natural center fielder on their roster other than PCA. Ian Happ once played a fair amount of center field for the Cubs, but he hasn’t played there since 2022 (and only three games that year). Kyle Tucker has played five career games in center field, none since 2021. And Seiya Suzuki has never played a MLB game in center field.
That leaves Vidal Bruján as the Cubs’ current backup center fielder. Bruján hasn’t played much center field either, just 14 games, 12 of those last year with the Marlins.
One thing I’m a bit surprised at is that Craig Counsell hasn’t put Bruján in center field in the late innings of blowouts to give PCA a rest. As I noted, so far that hasn’t been a real issue for PCA with all the off days in the schedule. But after the off day Thursday and another next Monday, the Cubs will play 13 days in a row, with six of those games tough road games in Detroit and Philadelphia.
Maybe PCA can handle this sort of workload, and of course we aren’t into the hottest days of summer yet. But I wouldn’t want to see him burned out with little or no rest as the team gets into pennant-race days later this summer, or in the postseason.
So what to do? The only outfielder in the system who’d be a logical callup is Kevin Alcántara, now at Triple-A Iowa. Of Alcántara’s 41 games at Iowa this year, he’s played 22 (all starts) in center field. But putting Alcántara on the 26-man roster would require removing a position player, and the only choices there would be Bruján, Jon Berti or Justin Turner.
I’m not sure what I’d do here, or if this is even an issue. What would you do?