Sara’s Snapshots: The Pete Crow-Armstrong Show is Incredible

MLB: Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago Cubs — Pete Crow-Armstrong rounds the bases after hitting the longest home run of his career against the Brewers last night | David Banks-Imagn Images

The Cubs centerfielder put on a display Tuesday evening.

Mere days after we found out that Pete Crow-Armstrong led all National League outfielders in All Star voting the Cubs’ 23-year-old centerfielder put on quite the show demonstrating how he got there at Wrigley Field.

In Tuesday night’s game against the Brewers, the Cubs were leading by one run in the top of the eighth inning when PCA flashed some leather on an incredible catch with a 5 percent catch probability, before immediately following it up with the longest home run of his career: 452 feet off the scoreboard in right field. In the span of about five actual minutes he put an exclamation point on a night that’s indicative of his breakout season so far. Of course you want to see both plays again [VIDEO].

The catch

Pete Crow-Armstrong is already in motion by the time the camera cuts to him chasing down this Brice Turang line drive, because of course he is:

PCA starting towards the ball as soon as it’s hit

That’s part of the magic. I’m pretty sure Pete is the first person to refer to himself as a golden retriever in centerfield, but I’ve since read that metaphor in this excellent piece on PCA by Davy Andrews at FanGraphs as well. It’s a perfect metaphor. The dude was born to chase down fly balls:

PCA gets to the ball because of course he does

We’ll let Statcast do some more quantitative evaluation of this catch in a second, but before that I just want to show how much ground PCA covers on this play, because it’s actually absurd:

That ball is a hit. The only question off the bat is will Happ or PCA be able to keep it from rolling to the wall. Turang is fast. It’s a one-run game and that’s a ball that just really doesn’t look like anyone has a prayer to get to it. But PCA is PCA, so we get this:

It’s yet another five-star opportunity for Pete Crow-Armstrong, who is six for 11 on such opportunities on the season. For context, the next closest players on the leaderboard as of this writing are Victor Scott II and Wilyer Abreu with three successful such catches out of 11 and 13 opportunities respectively. Absurd.

I mean, just look how low to the ground this ball is when PCA starts the perfect dive:

It’s not even really a dive, he’s just so precise and perfect to the ball

Caleb Thielbar is amused:

Brice Turang is not:

Brice Turang forlornly dreaming of the double that did not come to pass

The home run

Honestly, I was going to write this piece just based on the catch. Period. The end. That’s a stunning catch, one of the best I’ve ever seen. But within five minutes PCA decided to raise the bar yet again with a mammoth home run off the video board in right.

This is not a terrible pitch by lefty and former Cub Rob Zastryzny:

And the thing is, PCA has struggled against lefties this year. While he’s slashing .302/.341/.599 with 14 home runs against righthanded pitchers in 2025, he’s slashing just .188/.217/.425 with five home runs against southpaws. Admittedly, our pal Rob isn’t a power lefty, but it’s still a pretty big development that PCA hit the furthest home run of his career and set a new max exit velocity against a lefty:

In a previous iteration of Wrigley Field that ball is ticketed for Sheffield Avenue. For today’s purposes, that ball is in the Schwarbzone, because the last guy I remember on the Cubs who could go 452 feet off the board in right was Kyle Schwarber.

PCA didn’t merely hit the video board. He hit the upper left quadrant of the video board:

The ball is ticketed for Jackson Chourio’s line.

That “0-4” is the line at the time of the home run for Jackson Chourio. Jackson Chourio was hitting second for the Brewers last night. Setting a new max EV for PCA by 2.9 miles per hour demands a bat slam:

PCA’s bat flip! pic.twitter.com/xIfW3SKaFP

— Brendan Miller (@brendan_cubs) June 18, 2025

The crowd knows before PCA is out of the box:

They were loving it in the bleachers:

I think this tweet from Bryan Smith summed it up correctly:

It’s just not often that a fanbase in any sport gets a generational viewing experience kind of superstar.

We got one.

— Cubs Prospects – Bryan Smith (@cubprospects) June 18, 2025

A “generational viewing experience kind of superstar” is exactly what we’re seeing day after day and night after night at Wrigley Field with Pete Crow-Armstrong, and I, for one, am thrilled to have a front row seat to the PCA Experience.