Blaming Pete Crow-Armstrong for the Cubs' Wild Card exit is the laziest read available, and plenty of people grabbed it with both hands the second the series ended.
The Padres swept Chicago out of the best-of-three NL Wild Card Series on Wednesday, outscoring the Cubs 12-1 across two games. Game 1 was an 8-0 wipeout behind Michael King, who took a no-hitter into the seventh against a team that led the majors in runs scored all season. Game 2 went 4-1. Chicago, the loudest offense in baseball for 162 games, managed one run and eight hits in two elimination games. Four of those eight hits belonged to Nico Hoerner, who drove in the only run they scored. He was the one Cub who showed up. Everyone else was a passenger.
So yes, Crow-Armstrong went 0-for-7 with four strikeouts. He also wasn't alone in the morgue. Alex Bregman, the veteran with the October resume and the eight-figure salary, went hitless and struck out four times too. Between the two of them, nothing. If you want to single out the guy who disappeared, you've got a lineup card full of candidates, and the one you'd least expect to pick is the 24-year-old who just put together one of the best all-around seasons anyone has had this century.
The pile-on conveniently forgets that. This is a player who hit .280/.372/.570 with 45 home runs and 41 steals, joined the 40/40 club, and is the presumptive NL MVP after stacking up nearly 10 WAR. That season is real. It doesn't shrink because Michael King was filthy on the right two nights. Two playoff games don't sum up a career.
Crow-Armstrong's response to them was the most adult thing anyone in that clubhouse did. "You can look at the scoreboard, you can look at the stat sheet, wherever you get your numbers from, and it is clear to see that I didn't contribute," he said. "None of it feels good. Pretty disappointed in myself, but that's for me to work on." No excuses, no blaming the matchup. He didn't deflect onto the eight other bats that went quiet alongside him. He stood there and took it.
That honesty is being used against him, which is backwards. A guy owns his slump at the podium, and the reward is a crowd happy to watch him squirm. Anyone getting satisfaction out of a 24-year-old flogging himself in public is enjoying the wrong thing. The accountability should earn him slack.
The pattern is the one thing critics can actually point to. He hit .184 with 12 strikeouts over eight playoff games last year, so this is a second straight thin October. A cold postseason stretch for a player who can't legally rent a car without a surcharge is something to fix. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. spent years looking lost in short October series before he put up the best postseason OPS the game has ever seen. Young hitters rewrite this stuff all the time.
The Cubs lost because the best offense in baseball forgot how to hit for 48 hours, and a very good pitcher made sure of it. Spread the blame across nine spots in the order, or hand most of it to San Diego, where it belongs. Dumping it on the one player honest enough to raise his hand is cowardice.
