BALTIMORE — Pete Crow-Armstrong isn’t showing any signs of cooling off at the plate.
Crow-Armstrong became the first hitter with at least 20 home runs and 20 steals in MLB this season when he went deep in the third inning to give the Chicago Cubs an early lead against the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday night at Camden Yards.
The 24-year-old center fielder took Orioles starter Dean Kremer out of the ballpark again in the fifth for his second multihomer game of the season. Seiya Suzuki added a three-run shot in a five-run seventh — one of their five home runs — and the Cubs held on for a 9-7 victory, their third straight and eighth in 10 games.
Despite not having his best stuff, right-hander Colin Rea gave up three runs on seven hits in 5 1/3 innings. Jacob Webb picked up his team-leading fourth save with a clean nine-pitch ninth inning to retire the side on three groundouts.
Both of Crow-Armstrong’s home runs came against Kremer’s splitter, something a big-league hitter hasn’t done against that pitch twice in a game since Manny Machado on Sept. 21, 2021. Crow-Armstrong’s eight career multihomer games before age 25 are the most in Cubs history, passing Ron Santo, Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant.
“It’s just where Pete is right now, he’s able to make an adjustment in the at-bat, and that’s exactly what he did when he’s locked in,” manager Craig Counsell said.
Crow-Armstrong is the first Cub with back-to-back 20-20 seasons since Sammy Sosa did it in three straight (1993-95) and the third with multiple such seasons (Sosa and Ryne Sandberg).
Crow-Armstrong, just as he did a year ago, isn’t dwelling on the elite players his production has put him among. Instead, he’s focused on not being satisfied, like with his strikeout against Orioles reliever Tyler Wells in the ninth.
“I’ve got a lot more baseball to play,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I’ll be going home thinking about my last at-bat and how I approach that one if I face him again tomorrow.”
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He accomplished the 20-20 feat before the All-Star break for a second consecutive season. It again puts Crow-Armstrong in rare company as one of four players in MLB history to go 20-20 before their team’s 95th game in a season after reaching the mark in 73 games last year and in the Cubs’ 92nd game Wednesday. He joins Alfonso Soriano (2002-03, ’06), Jose Canseco (1988, ’98) and Bobby Bonds (1969, ’73, ’77).
“It tells you the start that his career is off to — it’s a young career, it’s brand new, but he’s doing things that the greats in the game have done, and you know they’re small time frame accomplishments, but still great,” Counsell said.
“The improvement that we’ve seen is so exciting for Cubs fans. Watching him play every day, I mean, I think the dugout on the first home run was just kind of shaking their head kind of in amazement at how he’s able to get to that pitch.”
Including Wednesday’s performance, Crow-Armstrong’s 5.8 fWAR leads all major-league hitters while posting a .297/.385/.544 slash line with 21 home runs, 14 doubles, four triples, 52 RBIs, 23 steals and 59 runs scored.
Following the Cubs’ five-run seventh, which featured three home runs, the Orioles chipped away at the lead with a pair of runs in the seventh and eighth innings. Dansby Swanson’s stellar diving grab to end the eighth saved another run from scoring that would have trimmed the Cubs’ lead to one run. Watching the sequence from center field, Crow-Armstrong called the play a “momentum killer for them.”
Swanson came into the game fourth among MLB shortstops in Run Fielding Value, a combined stat measuring total defense.
“That’s one thing that this team is great at, and it shows up every day, is our defense, and Dansby is right in the middle of it,” Counsell said. “He made another great diving play on a line drive, it’s two in three or four days.”