Pete Crow-Armstrong didn’t hide from the ending.
After the Cubs were bounced by the Padres in the Wild Card Series, the center fielder owned the fact that his bat never showed up when the games turned up the heat. Chicago dropped Game 1, 8-1, on Tuesday and then fell again, 4-1, on Wednesday, with the lineup largely bottled up by San Diego’s pitching.
Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman, the Cubs’ Nos. 1 and 2 hitters, were right in the middle of that quiet series. The two combined to go 0 for 15 with eight strikeouts.
That’s going to put the spotlight squarely on Crow-Armstrong, especially after the kind of regular season he just finished. He put together what should almost certainly be an NL MVP campaign, and he knows the postseason finish doesn’t erase the standard that comes with that.
"We were challenged this year," Crow-Armstrong said when asked what could take the Cubs to the next level (The Athletic). "This team showed a lot of heart and a lot of fight through all the challenges.
But I would say, to start: I show up. I show up when it matters in these games.
That would help us immediately. But that's all I got right now."
He didn’t stop there.
"You can look at the scoreboard, you can look at the stat sheet, wherever you get your numbers from, and it is clear to see that I didn't contribute," he said later. "None of it feels good. Pretty disappointed in myself, but that's for me to work on."
That’s a tough way to close a season, because the regular-season production was enormous. Crow-Armstrong hit .280/.372/.570 with a 156 OPS+, added 31 doubles, eight triples, 45 home runs, 107 RBI, 119 runs and 41 steals, and built one of the best all-around years the sport has seen in the century.
The strange part is that he usually didn’t blink when the pressure climbed. In 2026, he hit .336/.423/.630 with runners in scoring position.
In high-leverage spots, he posted a .284/.403/.547 line. And in late-and-close situations, he was even better: .354/.449/.646.
So the postseason miss stands out even more. Until Crow-Armstrong delivers in October, the questions will keep coming, especially for a player who’s in line to win MVP. But he sounded like someone who understands exactly what comes with that spotlight.
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