After falling behind the Reds early, Pete Crow Armstrong took over the game and led the Cubs to a big 13-6 series-opening victory on Friday night. For the game, PCA went 3-for-5 with a double, two homers, and six RBI. The home runs were the 13th and 14th of the young centerfielder’s breakout season.
Chicago starter Matthew Boyd was dealt some bad luck in the first inning, as a Reds’ ballboy accidentally fielded a fair ball down the line off the bat of T.J. Friedl to start the game. The play was ruled a double, and it was followed by a failed Boyd glove-flip to first on a slow dribbler off the bat of Santiago Espinal. The Reds added bloop singles by Elly De La Cruz and Austin Hays and a double by Spencer Steer to finish the inning up 3-0. A Hays triple and a Boyd wild pitch led to another run in the third.
With the Cubs down 4-0 in the top of the fourth inning, Seiya Suzuki hit a one-out double, followed by Crow Armstrong’s first homer of the night to chase Reds’ starter Hunter Greene. The Reds added two more runs in the fifth inning on a Tyler Stephenson RBI double and a Friedl RBI single. In the seventh inning, Kyle Tucker drove in two runs with a single, and PCA followed two batters later with the first grand slam of his career to make the score 8-6. Suzuki added a 3-run homer in the 8th inning, and Dansby Swanson blasted a two-run shot in the ninth for a 13-6 final score.
The Cubs’ bullpen has been unreliable at best again this season, and it looked like that would continue tonight. Boyd gave up four runs on eight hits and two walks in his worst start of the season, lasting only four innings. Julian Merryweather replaced him in the fifth and lasted only two-thirds of an inning, giving up two runs on 3 hits and a walk. Chris Flexen got the Cubs out of the fifth without any further damage, though, and went on to pitch a scoreless sixth. Brad Keller, Drew Pomerantz, and Ryan Pressly each added a scoreless inning to finish things out.
Friday’s win puts the Cubs at 31-20 for the season, three games ahead of the second-place St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Central. The Reds fall to 25-27 with the loss, tied for third in the division with the Milwaukee Brewers. The two teams will go at it again on Saturday afternoon, in what could be quite a pitching duel. Colin Rea (3-0, 2.38) will start for the Cubs, and Andrew Abbott (3-0, 1.80) will go for the Reds.
Pete Crow Armstrong has always had the reputation of being a Gold Glove-caliber center fielder and a terror on the base paths. The question had always been, could he hit? After a quiet March, PCA has put together stellar offensive numbers. He already has three multi-homerun games and has amassed a .287/.319/.589 slash line with 13 doubles, three triples, 14 homeruns, 45 RBI, and 14 steals.
On a Cubs team where Kyle Tucker, Seiya Suzuki, Dansby Swanson, and Carson Kelly have all put up big numbers to start the season, the flashy center fielder has garnered most of the attention. When you add in all of his dazzling plays in the outfield, he has truly become one of the stars of the first half of the MLB season and an early MVP candidate.
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