PCA Could End Shohei Ohtani’s MVP Streak as U.S. Media Backs Him as Baseball’s Needed Star

Pete Crow-Armstrong has moved ahead of Shohei Ohtani in the National League MVP race, giving the Chicago Cubs star a chance to end Ohtani’s four-year run of dominance.

Crow-Armstrong has hit 39 home runs and stolen 32 bases. He is pursuing a 40-homer, 40-steal season, a feat that would make him the first player in Cubs history to achieve it and only the seventh such season in Major League Baseball history. Ohtani was the most recent player to reach the mark.

Sports Illustrated columnist Ryan Phillips made the case for Crow-Armstrong in an article titled “Armstrong Is the MVP Baseball Needs.” Phillips praised both his play and his personality, describing him as direct, openly joyful and unwilling to hide behind polished clichés or meaningless grand statements.

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Armstrong is the MVP baseball needs.

Phillips wrote that Crow-Armstrong is not a player afraid of mistakes or manufactured into a corporate product. That, he argued, is why fans connect with him. Ohtani, Phillips acknowledged, may possess the greatest talent in major league history, but baseball also needs superstars who feel like real people.

The column portrayed Crow-Armstrong as intensely protective of his private life, almost like an ascetic who happened to become one of the world’s greatest baseball players. It also described his appeal in less polished terms: he can be the player fans love when he plays for their team and hate when he does not. His flaws and strengths both appear genuine, the column said, and that human quality drives his popularity.

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He is not the kind of person who is afraid of making mistakes, a person packaged and created like a corporate product, and fans deeply love him for that.