Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong joins MLB's elite 40-40 club

Pete Crow-Armstrong stole his 40th base of the season Thursday, Sept. 24, and with it, he did something no one has ever done wearing a Cubs uniform.

With the 40 steals and 45 home runs, Crow-Armstrong joined MLB’s 40-40 club.

He becomes the seventh MLB player to steal 40 bases and hit 40 home runs in the same season. Jose Canseco was the first to get there in 1988, Barry Bonds did it in 1996, Alex Rodriguez in 1998, Alfonso Soriano in 2006, Ronald Acuna Jr. in 2023 and Shohei Ohtani in 2024, when he completely blew past it and became baseball’s first 50-50 player.

Three of those members of the 40-40 club also won the MVP award that season. Crow-Armstrong is certainly the leader in the clubhouse for the NL’s version of that award as well.

It took him longer than it probably should have.

Crow-Armstrong had 36 steals by Sept. 8, including two in a game gainst the Milwaukee Brewers on Sept. 7, then didn’t add another in the next four games before swiping his 37th of the season against the Atlanta Braves on Sept. 14. It wasn’t that he stopped trying, but pitchers stopped giving him much to run on. He got there anyway with three games to spare.

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The Cubs got Crow-Armstrong from the New York Mets in 2021, in a trade-deadline deal that sent Javier Baez and Trevor Williams to New York. Mets fans have had years to regret it. PCA debuted in September 2023, made his first All-Star team last year and won a Gold Glove in center field, and went 30-30 for the second consecutive season before doing this.

To be fair, nobody really saw this coming when the trade happened.

Crow-Armstrong was a top defensive prospect, but his bat was always in question. He has improved his bat speed, including nearly two ticks this year from 2025. He changed his batting stance, lowering his hands and shortened his swing path as he stood closer to the plate to change how pitchers attack him.

He also improved in the strike zone. His walk rate has nearly tripled from 4.5% to 11.5% and his chase rate on pitches out of the zone dropped from 41.7% to under 34%.