Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong wins NL MVP to cap all-time season of homers, stolen bases and defensive excellence

Pete Crow-Armstrong is the National League’s Most Valuable Player.

But you didn’t need Thursday’s official announcement to know that.

All you had to do was be one of the many who marveled at all the 24-year-old Cubs superstar did on the field this season to know there was no one in the sport who had as much of an impact as he did.

“Watching him every day,” starting pitcher Shota Imanaga said through an interpreter in mid June, “he’s a player that overcomes your imagination.”

Crow-Armstrong has a full trophy case in the wake of one of baseball’s all-time great individual campaigns, just the seventh 40-homer, 40-steal season in major league history with Platinum Glove defense, to boot.

He’s the Cubs’ first MVP since Kris Bryant took home the award in 2016, the same year his team won the World Series. He’s the 12th player to win an MVP as a Cub, joining legends such as Sammy Sosa, Andre Dawson, Ryne Sandberg and Ernie Banks.

But unlike all those household names at Clark and Addison, Crow-Armstrong did it in a way that hadn’t been done before. That’s what had teammates in awe all summer long.

More than the numbers, Crow-Armstrong provided one signature moment after another. He delivered walk-off wins, multi-homer games, a cycle and a memorable night with fellow Chicago sports stars in attendance.

He also duked it out with Dodgers two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, the man no one believed could be dethroned from his status as the perennial MVP. That Crow-Armstrong’s win comes in the Ohtani Era is even more impressive, even with Ohtani’s injury issues keeping him from his best self this year.

For a while, though, there was a real argument that Crow-Armstrong, with his offensive and defensive prowess, matched Ohtani’s impact as both an elite hitter and an elite pitcher.

“It is really similar to what I saw last year,” designated hitter Michael Conforto, who played with Ohtani in 2025 and Crow-Armstrong in 2026, said in September. “You see a guy go out there and do things that no one else can do. And he does it different than Shohei does it. But it’s the same thing. He moves differently. He has different tools than everyone else.

“You just kind of enjoy sitting back and watching history being made.”

It was a remarkable transformation that launched Crow-Armstrong into the stratosphere of baseball’s greats. A guy who chased pitches out of the zone and slumped badly in the second half of the 2025 season was a changed hitter in 2026, his on-base percentage skyrocketing from .287 to .372 and his walk rate shooting up from 4.5 percent to 11.4 as newfound patience made him one of the game’s most dangerous batsmen.

Add the base-running and defensive abilities that were always there, and the Cubs have a player at the top of their lineup who makes an all-around impact unlike any other in the sport.

“The most impressive thing is the plate discipline and the walks,” outfielder Ian Happ said in early July. “For him to get to this point this quickly and really … kind of change the way that he approaches at-bats and the patience, the ability to lay off some really tough pitches … that’s been the most impressive thing to watch.

“There’s always been thump there. There’s always been unbelievable tools and the speed and the defense. … But … to watch the way that he’s walking, it makes him so lethal because he’s such a good baserunner.”

Crow-Armstrong spent the summer downplaying his individual accomplishments, particularly as the weekly and monthly honors rolled in. He voiced a focus on team goals, which were decisively not met, with Crow-Armstrong’s playoff no-show contributing to a rapid postseason exit.

But while Crow-Armstrong was left smarting from the Cubs’ fortunes, it did nothing to diminish a phenomenal regular season, one that will live not only in the record books and the trophy on his mantle but the memory of all who went along for the ride.

“It’s one of those things where you’ve got to stop and pinch yourself and step back and go, ‘Man, we’re witnessing one of the all-time seasons in baseball history,’” starting pitcher Matthew Boyd said in September.

The Astros' Yordan Alvarez won the AL MVP.