There will probably be some voters who give the National League MVP ballot a hard look and pore over all the possibilities, or just vote for Shohei Ohtani out of pure reflex. Which is fine enough as it goes. This is one of the quirks of democracy: Sometimes you have to let people be wrong for their own reasons, at least until we expand the vote to children above the age of birth, family pets, and animals who live in national parks.
But it's far more likely that when those votes are counted, the MVP will be Pete Crow-Armstrong. If performance trumps celebrity, the ballots won't have any other name on them. It's OK from time to time to let the obvious be obvious, and if Shohei Ohtani is still Shohei Ohtani, Pete Crow-Armstrong is just as plainly the MVP.
This is not preaching, mind you, and there's no need for advocacy on the Cubs center fielder's behalf. Crow-Armstrong was having a better season than anyone else even before Ohtani's body started looking into the process of aging, and even today the statistical differences between Crow-Armstrong and the second- and third-most effective players in the league—by WAR, that's pitcher Cristopher Sánchez of the Phillies, and Milwaukee second baseman Brice Turang—are in some cases wider than in any other campaign since Roger Clemens lapped the field in 1997. Indeed, the only argument you can muster, if this is the sort of thing you go for, is whether Crow-Armstrong is having a better season than Houston left fielder Yordan Alvarez, and astonishing as Alvarez's has been—he is slugging an even .600—his season nevertheless might end on Sunday afternoon in the lonely prairies of Yolo County, California. The AL West weighs on a curve in singular ways.
By the most obvious boldface numbers, Crow-Armstrong has had a historic season. He is only the seventh player in baseball history to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases simultaneously, which seems less remarkable only because it has lately become a jarringly commonplace feat—Ohtani did it in '24, and Ronald Acuña Jr. the year before that. Which is not to say that Cubs fans didn't appreciate it in the moment.
But Crow-Armstrong's speed also helps make him a ridiculously accomplished outfielder, and his improvement since last year across the board has shrunk the holes in his game from noticeable to microscopic. He got better at the stuff he was already the best at, which is center-field defense, and also upped his power production while raising his on-base percentage nearly 100 points, and in so doing went one of the most valuable players in the league—he finished ninth in last year's voting—to producing one of the most valuable position player seasons in memory. If there is a first-place vote for anyone else, be it Ohtani, Turang, Sanchez or Elly De La Cruz, we will at least have the enjoyment of watching ballwriters shriek for the head of the miscreant who cast it.
But there shouldn't be. In fact, one of the grim developments of recent voting is that people start handicapping the race on Opening Day and begin the work of sifting through any rogue opinions well before the All-Star Break. Contrarians are shouted down with ear-piercing shrillness, and a joyless consensus locks itself in. Five of the last six MVPs have been unanimous as a partial result of this new jackbooted orthodoxy. The two awards this year should be the same, because just as Crow-Armstrong is painfully obvious in the National League, Alvarez is parsecs distant from his closest competitors for three different reasons. One, his year is his year. Two, Cam Schlittler is a pitcher and so will have to settle for the Cy Young award that should unanimously be his. Bobby Witt Jr., tragically, is a Royal.
None of this should matter where Crow-Armstrong is concerned, and by all accounts it doesn't. But the Cubs making the postseason means that his Q rating, which has been largely subdued because he doesn't have Ohtani's world-historic audience-making skill, will finally grow as non-Cubs fans get to watch him work in October. Reputations among mere mammals are made in the postseason, and that is the one place Crow-Armstrong has yet to excel.
It isn't that Crow-Armstrong doesn't have this all coming, as the things he did to become a better hitter in all situations induced manager Craig Counsell (or overlord Jed Hoyer, depending on who makes the lineup card at Wrigley Field) to move him from the cleanup spot to the bottom of the order to leadoff, all in a month and half, to get him more plate appearances. If Ohtani is fully operational when the Dodgers start playing for dough next Saturday, he will still be his own celebrity. But for everything else you're looking for, Crow-Armstrong is undoubtedly your best entertainment value. He plays in a big market, he doesn't play in the AL, and he is currently playing at a level few players ever reach.
