Pete Crow-Armstrong is back to setting MLB records, and this time it’s on defense. We are truly witnessing a generational talent, the best the Chicago Cubs have ever seen, and the best center fielder in the sport right now.
On Monday night, Crow-Armstrong made another five-star catch, robbing Zach McKinstry of a two-out single in the sixth inning.
The Cubs star center fielder now has 33 career five-star catches since making his MLB debut in Sept. 2023. Since Statcast began to track the difficulty of catches in 2016, Crow-Armstrong’s effort against the Tigers broke a tie with four-time Gold Glove winner Kevin Kiermaier for most five-star catches in the Statcast era.
But here’s what makes the new record insane. Take a look at how quickly Crow-Armstrong passed Kiermaier’s five-star catch mark.
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That’s about 38% of Kiermaier’s playing time that Crow-Armstrong took to surpass the record Kiermaier amassed from 2016 to 2024.
Crow-Armstrong only needed 62 opportunities to get to 33 five-star catches, while everyone else in the top-10 in the category had at least 100 attempts at making those highlight catches. Another way to show how jaw-dropping this record really is: Crow-Armstrong’s success rate on making a five-star catch is at 53%.
That means he’s making a nearly impossible catch twice as often as the next best guy to do it in the past decade.
So far in 2026, MLB players are only making five-star catches less than 10% of the time.
Via MLB.com.
This year in the Majors, there have been nearly 1,600 opportunities for a fielder to make a 5-Star Catch. Only 131 times has it happened, which is to say: Something like 8% of 5-Star play opportunities actually get converted. Crow-Armstrong is six times better than that.
There is simply no one better, not even close to Pete Crow-Armstrong. Amazing.
