Why PCA's elite defense is even better than it looks

Last week against the Dodgers, Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong made one of the finest defensive plays of the young season. Unfortunately for him, he performed his job a little too well.

Even if you were watching the game in real time, you likely neither noticed nor cared that he made a nice running catch of the liner off the bat of Tommy Edman. It looked like any play you might see a handful of times a night across the sport. It leads this article. You might have scrolled right past it.

It’s the curse of evaluating defense, really. A hitter can’t smash a home run too far for it to look good; a pitcher can’t strike out a hitter too badly for it to seem cool. But for a defender, particularly an elite one like Crow-Armstrong, you really can make your job look too easy through elite skill. That's in part because when you’re watching on the broadcast, you’re not really seeing what a fielder does until the ball is nearly to them. (Even if you're watching from the stands, your eye is typically on the pitcher and batter at the beginning of a play.)

But defense, as it turns out, isn’t just about the last second before the ball gets there. It starts when you’re not even looking.

In Crow-Armstrong’s case, that’s exactly what happened on the ball Edman hit. Given the particulars of the opportunity presented to him – he had 3.3 seconds to cover 52 feet – it was a chance that outfielders turn into an out a mere 10% of the time, or a 10% Catch Probability. But because Crow-Armstrong got such an elite jump on the ball, more than 14 feet better than average, he didn’t need to dive. He didn’t need to make it look great. He made the play not when the ball hit his glove, but before the ball even got over the infield. The hard work was done by the time he got there.

That, we understand, is a hard concept to really grasp unless you can see it, so let’s help with that. In 2023, Detroit’s Matt Vierling was playing center field in a May game against the Pirates, and he was presented with a nearly identical opportunity. That’s not only in terms of “they both needed to go 52 feet in 3.3 seconds,” which is the meat of what powers Statcast’s Catch Probability, but also in the purely visual sense that they were both positioned identically as deep (326 feet from home) and had to take nearly identical angles to get to the ball off the bat of a lefty hitter.

Crow-Armstrong got there and made it look easy. Vierling didn’t get close enough to attempt a dive.

You can get the point even clearer by just looking at a still image comparison. Crow-Armstrong’s route was faster and more direct, and he moved faster. It should be noted, too, that we didn’t pick a play where Vierling performed poorly, or made some inexcusable error. Despite getting off to a jump 9 feet worse than Crow-Armstrong’s, Vierling was still 5 feet better than the Major League average. PCA was just even better than that.

It’s not just Vierling, either. There are plenty of examples of similar chances where the fielder can’t get there – here’s Jazz Chisholm Jr. trying, and Harrison Bader, and Cedric Mullins, and Julio Rodríguez, and even Crow-Armstrong himself, earlier this year – and only a few examples where the fielder makes the catch, including Mike Trout and, pleasingly, Kevin Kiermaier, one of the best defenders to ever grace the field.

This is largely why, when we look at the Outs Above Average leaderboard for 2025, Crow-Armstrong is at the top among all players, and he’s tied at the top among outfielders in 2024-25.

Best outfielders (Outs Above Average) 2024-25

• 21 Crow-Armstrong, CHC <--
• 21 Jacob Young, WSH
• 18 Brenton Doyle, COL
• 17 Michael Siani, STL
• 17 Jake Meyers, HOU
• 16 Daulton Varsho, TOR
• 16 Jose Siri, NYM
• 14 Harrison Bader, MIN

It’s in part due to the pure speed, obviously, as Crow-Armstrong has rated in the 95th percentile or above in Sprint Speed in each of his three seasons in the Majors. But it’s also about his ability to react quickly: Crow-Armstrong has improved the jumps he gets in each year. In his brief look as a rookie in 2023, he was getting jumps +2 feet better than average; in '24, it was 3 feet better; this year, it’s 5 feet better than average, second-best in the Majors behind only Boston’s Ceddanne Rafaela.

It’s important to understand what that actually means, though. “Getting a good jump” is measured as feet covered in the right direction in the first 3 seconds after the pitch is released. Crow-Armstrong is outstanding in the first 1.5 seconds, gaining 2.2 extra feet against average. He’s tremendous in the second 1.5 seconds too, gaining 2.9 extra feet, a top-five number. Where he doesn’t stand out – where many top outfielders don’t – is in route running, where he’s slightly below average.

There’s a simple reason for that. While it seems like it should matter – and it’s certainly nice to have – it’s not nearly as important as simply getting going quickly, and this is something that some teams are actively training to improve. Just look at what Miami outfield coach Blake Lalli told MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola earlier this month. Marlins outfielders have gone from -13 OAA over the last two seasons to +2 OAA so far in 2025.

“Correlation has shown that the outfielders that react the best go make more plays, even if their route is a little off,” Lalli said. “We just put hyper focus on moving early and quick, and seeing where it gets us, and trying new things.”

Exactly right.

For Crow-Armstrong, his combination of skills – elite speed and excellent jumps – can manifest itself in ways you see, and, like in the Edman catch, ways you don’t. Take this example, when he tracked down a ball off the bat of Athletics slugger Tyler Soderstrom on March 31. It’s not exactly the same, because it wasn’t quite as difficult a chance (45% Catch Probability, so essentially a 50/50 shot) because he had 4.2 seconds to get there this time. But, as with Edman, the outstanding jump – 11 feet better than average – allows him to glide easily under the ball.

On April 4, he ran 103 feet to track down a tough opportunity off the bat of the Padres' Xander Bogaerts (20% Catch Probability) against the brick walls of Wrigley – aided, in part, by getting a jump 7 feet better than the Major League average. Realize what that means: If he was 7 feet further away from the ball, or more than the length of his body, this ball hits the wall and goes for extra bases.

And sure, sometimes they do look great. You don’t have to look all that hard to find examples of Crow-Armstrong making highlight-reel dives, either, although anecdotally, it does seem like there have been fewer of those this year.

Maybe that’s less exciting. But maybe that’s the point, too. If you can just get there – if your reactions are elite, and your running speed matches – you’ll never really need to dive. Crow-Armstrong might be one of the most exciting young players in the game right now. That his defense seems less exciting might just tell you a little about his growth.