Pete Crow-Armstrong's electric 2026 season officially holds its place in MLB history.
The Chicago Cubs centre-fielder was named the National League MVP on Thursday, beating out Los Angeles Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani and Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Brice Turang in voting conducted by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Crow-Armstrong took the honour unanimously, earning all 30 first-place votes. Ohtani finished second in the vote with 264 points.
Crow-Armstrong, or "PCA," was a wrecking ball in all aspects of the game for Chicago in 2026, becoming just the seventh player to have 40 homers and 40 steals in a single season and winning the NL Platinum Glove for his work defensively.
The 24-year-old appeared in 162 games for the Cubs, accruing 9.8 bWAR while slashing .280/.372/.570 with 45 homers, 119 runs scored, 107 RBIs, 41 steals, 31 doubles and eight triples.
He paced the senior circuit in homers, slugging percentage, OPS and total bases.
Crow-Armstrong's victory ended a three-year run of Ohtani MVPs (one in the AL, two in the NL) as the Cubs superstar ran away with the award down the stretch.
Along with Thursday's honour and all his statistical accomplishments in 2026, Crow-Armstrong also won the NL Gold Glove in centre field, the league's Hank Aaron Award as top hitter, was selected to the All-Star Game in July for the second time in his four-year career and earned a spot on the All-MLB First Team.
Chicago went 89-73 and earned a spot in the NL playoff picture as a wild-card team, where it bowed out in two games against the San Diego Padres.
PCA now becomes the 12th individual Cubs player to be named MVP and the first since Kris Bryant in 2016.
Originally drafted in the first round of the 2020 MLB Draft by the New York Mets, the Sherman Oaks, Calif., native found his way to the North Side in a 2021 trade-deadline swap that saw the Cubs ship Javier Báez, Trevor Williams and cash to Queens in return.
He made his MLB debut towards the end of the 2023 season before becoming a fixture in the outfield for Chicago the next year.
Crow-Armstrong first broke out in 2025, though, when he hit 31 homers and stole 35 bases in 157 games and finished ninth in NL MVP voting.
