Cubs are instilling a winning mentality in Pete Crow-Armstrong

Pete Crow-Armstrong quickly huddled with Justin Turner at Wrigley Field before his fifth and final at-bat of the afternoon. At that moment, the Cubs held a five-run lead over the White Sox, and Crow-Armstrong had already put on a show for the crowd of 40,171, becoming a new antagonist in the crosstown rivalry.

The in-game box score last Friday showed Crow-Armstrong was 3-for-4 with a home run and 4 RBIs when he checked in with Turner, the 40-year-old reserve player who’s viewed as a hitting expert and a clubhouse sage. Crow-Armstrong, still only 23 and already a budding National League MVP candidate, listened and refocused.

“Hey, man, you’re having a really good day, don’t give this last at-bat away,” Turner recalled saying to Crow-Armstrong. “Don’t leave the day with a bad taste in your mouth because you tried to do something out of the normal.”

That brief conversation is not an example of cause and effect. The White Sox will be overmatched all season, and Crow-Armstrong’s talent speaks for itself. What that interaction illustrates is the connected nature of this Cubs team, how players are eager to exchange information and stay in tune with the game’s rhythms.

Crow-Armstrong stepped into the batter’s box and knocked a two-out, two-run single into center field. As the Chicago media crowded around his locker after the game, Crow-Armstrong did not make it about himself, crediting hitting coaches Dustin Kelly and John Mallee for their help in spring training, and citing Turner’s more recent influence on his approach.

“It’s real easy to give at-bats away in this game, especially when the game’s out of hand,” Turner said. “His goal this year is to try to take a quality at-bat every single time. Regardless of the results, take a quality at-bat. It was just reminding him: ‘Hey, make sure you take a good one here. Don’t give it away.’”

Turner speaks from experience, as someone who won a World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers and figured out how to make it to his 17th year in The Show. He was ahead of the curve with launch angle, overhauling his swing and enjoying the best years of his career in his 30s. He found ways to simplify and execute his plan in pressure situations, posting an .830 OPS over 19 postseason rounds.

That is a match for Crow-Armstrong’s growth mindset, which he honed on USA Baseball’s national teams and at Harvard-Westlake, an elite private school in Los Angeles. Before the New York Mets made him a first-round pick in the 2020 draft, here’s how Harvard-Westlake president Rick Commons described Crow-Armstrong: “He’s one of those outgoing, really popular young men whose energy is contagious. He’s also an excellent student committed to Vanderbilt.”

Crow-Armstrong instead signed with the Mets and wound up getting moved to the Cubs in the Javier Báez deal at the 2021 trade deadline. Like Báez, Crow-Armstrong plays the game with unique flair. Crow-Armstrong’s enthusiasm also extends to the reminder that he used to be a kid in the Dodger Stadium stands watching Turner play.

“I get (expletive) all the time” about being the old guy, Turner said. “We banter back and forth.”

That ability to talk trash, enjoy the process and focus on the task at hand is part of the team’s emerging identity. Cubs manager Craig Counsell, for example, supported Crow-Armstrong during an up-and-down rookie season while also challenging the Gold Glove-caliber center fielder to get better on defense. The high expectations are that any ball that touches Crow-Armstrong’s glove should be caught.

Everyday players such as Ian Happ, Nico Hoerner and Dansby Swanson offered encouragement during Crow-Armstrong’s slow start, reminding him that it’s a long season, and things can turn around fast. That’s exactly what happened for Crow-Armstrong, whose overall production has already been worth 2.9 WAR, per Baseball Reference, with nearly 70% of the schedule remaining.

“I’m prepared to go 0-for-4 tomorrow and go play defense,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And I’m prepared to go 4-for-4 and go play defense. It’s nice to be able to stay in the fight with a really good group of guys who definitely got my back.”

Every team needs surprises, as Counsell likes to say, and Crow-Armstrong’s potentially evolving into one of the game’s brightest stars certainly qualifies as a seismic development that changes the team’s ceiling.

The Cubs are already 10 games above .500 heading into Memorial Day weekend, and they believe Crow-Armstrong is well equipped to handle the relentless demands of a long season.

“It’s a capability of zooming in and zooming out,” Turner said. “Keep playing good baseball. Keep doing things the right way. Keep trying to win today. And at the end of it, we’re going to win a lot more games than we’re going to lose.

“Don’t look ahead. Don’t look behind. You can’t worry about what happened the last two games. We got to focus on doing everything we can to win a game today.”

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