Pete Crow-Armstrong Has Answered Every Question

There will probably be some voters who give the National League Most Valuable Player ballot a hard look and pore over all the possibilities, or just vote for Shohei Ohtani out of pure reflex. Which is fine enough as it goes. This is one of the quirks of democracy—sometimes you have to let people be wrong for their own reasons, at least until we expand the vote to children above the age of birth, family pets, and animals who live in national parks. But it's far more likely that when those votes are counted the MVP will be Pete Crow-Armstrong. If performance trumps celebrity, the ballots won't have any other name on them. It's OK from time to time to let the obvious be obvious, and if Shohei Ohtani is still Shohei Ohtani, Pete Crow-Armstrong is just as plainly the MVP. This is not preaching, mind you, and there's no need for advocacy on the Cubs centerfielder's behalf. Crow-Armstrong was having a better season than anyone else even before Ohtani's body started looking into the process of aging, and even today the statistical differences between Crow-Armstrong and the second and third most effective players in the league—by WAR that's pitcher Cristopher Sánchez of the Phillies and Milwaukee second baseman Brice Turang—are in some cases wider than in any other campaign since Roger Clemens lapped the field in 1997. Indeed, the only argument you can muster, if this is the sort of thing you go for, is whether Crow-Armstrong is having a better season than Houston left fielder Yordan Alvarez, and astonishing as Alvarez's has been—he is slugging an even .600—his season nevertheless might end on Sunday afternoon in the lonely prairies of Yolo County, California. The American League West weighs on a curve in singular ways.

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