It’s easy to dream on Pete Crow-Armstrong’s potential; plus, Coco claims French

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Good morning! Play good defense today.

Counting Crow-Armstrong: Dreaming big about Cubs’ center fielder

Shohei Ohtani is stuck in second in the National League in wins above replacement so far this year. The man ahead of him is 23-year-old Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, at 3.8, per FanGraphs. In his sophomore season, Crow-Armstrong has been a top-25 offensive producer by wRC+, with lots of pop making up for a mere .313 on-base percentage. But his sublime defense has elevated him to the highest tier of player value.

In the outfield, PCA was built for an era with modern tracking stats that highlight his fielding brilliance. I sometimes ponder how Willie Mays’ legendary defense might be considered even better if he’d played in a time of more robust tracking. PCA lives in that world.

He has 96th-percentile sprint speed and 94th-percentile arm strength, per Statcast, yet those physical gifts don’t fully explain it. He is a ball-tracking wizard who gets a quantifiably great jump and chases line drives like prey. I can click over to Baseball Savant and see that he’s created more Outs Above Average than any other center fielder. I can see that on balls with a zero to 25 percent chance of an out, PCA has recorded six outs, double anyone else. I can pull up video of a liner with a 10 percent catch probability that PCA didn’t even need to dive to grab:

Given that this defense is paired so far with one of the best bats in the league, I am letting myself get carried away. I asked Eno Sarris, The Athletic’s senior writer covering baseball analytics and co-host of “Rates & Barrels,” if I am ridiculous for thinking of Cooperstown:

💬 Crow-Armstrong is probably the best defensive player in baseball. It’s important to be excited about PCA and what he can do, but also realistic about his flaws and why it’s difficult to say he might be a Hall of Famer.

Eno noted that PCA’s rest-of-season FanGraphs projections (roughly a 106 wRC+ and 2.6 additional WAR) are quite similar to those of Brenton Doyle, the defense-first Rockies center fielder whom nobody is projecting for the Hall of Fame. Other comparisons: Parker Meadows, Luis Robert Jr., Josh Lowe and Cedric Mullins. Nice players, not future Hall members: 

💬 Projections are the best way to get a handle on a player’s true talent. They can look at the component abilities a player is showing and regress them each according to how much signal usually comes across in those categories. For example, PCA had a .557 slugging percentage entering the weekend, but his exit velocities and launch angles suggest he’s more of a .450 slugging guy going forward. With a 25 percent strikeout rate, too, you’d expect his batting average to regress.

So, was my expensive dinner bet with a friend last weekend — that PCA will make the Hall by his 10th year after retirement — a waste of a few hundred bucks? Not so fast:

💬 You have to leave room for improvement for a 23-year-old, though. And if PCA continues to hit for more power and strike out less, there is a pathway that ends in enshrinement. If the defense stays elite all the way through, he could make a case like the ones made by Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammell and Luis Aparacio, though with more power and in the outfield. But making incremental improvements to some of his underlying offensive skills would make it all more likely.

I continue to believe I’ll get a free meal by approximately 2048. He’s a star

News to Know

Gauff claims French Open title

Coco Gauff, the 21-year-old American sensation, pulled off the upsetagainst an error-prone Aryna Sabalenka yesterday to win her second Grand Slam singles title. Sabalenka claimed a tight first set, and then her game started to unravel as the wind picked up on Court Philippe Chatrier. Gauff made the adjustment, while Sabalenka let her frustrations fester. Listen to the latest episode of “The Tennis Podcast”for a full breakdown on Gauff’s incredible comeback.

Sabalenka was … salty. “She (Gauff) won the match not because she played incredible, just because I made all of those mistakes.” Some of these quotes are … yikes. But Coco’s title is far from a fluke.

Sovereignty trumps Journalism at the Belmont

Much like the Kentucky Derby, Journalism entered yesterday’s Belmont Stakes as the clear favorite. And in a very similar result to what transpired at Churchill Downs last month, Sovereignty surged down the stretch to beat Journalism by three lengths. Sovereignty could very well have been running for the Triple Crown last night if he had not been held out of the Preakness Stakes. The downtime clearly paid off, however.

More news:

• Aaron Rodgers officially signed his one-year contract with the Steelers yesterday. The deal includes $10 million guaranteed with a chance to be worth nearly double that. (Reminder: This and alllinks below free to read. Enjoy.)

• USMNT lost its opening match of the summer, a 2-1 defeat to Turkey in a friendly. Coach Mauricio Pochettino is the first U.S. coach with a three-game losing streak in his first 10 games since 1975.

• Former NFL cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones was arrested yesterday on charges of public intoxication, disorderly conduct and assault of an officer. It’s his second arrest in the last year.
• The Indiana Fever routed the Chicago Sky yesterday. The interesting aspect? No Caitlin Clark.

Watch Guide

📺 Golf: Canadian Open, final round | 1 p.m. ET on CBS

The national opens are some of the best PGA Tour events each year, and the Canadian — which leads into the U.S. Open next week — always makes for a great scene on Sunday. Hopefully no security guards will bodyslam any excited players on the 18th green. The top of the leaderboard is light on big names, but it’ll be fun.

📺 NBA: Pacers at Thunder, Game 2  | 8 p.m. ET on ABC 

The Pacers led Game 1 for 0.3 seconds, but they were the right 0.3 seconds. I anticipate a Game 2 romp for the Thunder, which would set up a long series. But OKC needs more from SGA.

Get tickets to games like these here.

Pulse Picks

Elise Devlin’s insightful Q&A with former Iowa women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder on how you lead an elite performer while maintaining a program-wide culture.

I finally finished “Andor” last week. (Shout-out to the McLaren F1 factories used for some of the sets.) That got me back on a “Star Wars” comics binge — specifically, Charles Soule’s runs on Darth Vader and post-“The Empire Strikes Back.” Best Star Wars writer going. A Soule-ful writer, if you will. (Sorry.) — Patrick Iversen

The new NWSL side Boston Legacy FC has learned an important lesson before even signing a single player: It’s OK to try again.

I read this piece weeks ago but am still thinking about it. Richard Sutcliffe wrote about how the Chernobyl nuclear disaster affected a soccer team and a stadium (that was never used). The pictures are haunting. — Kevin Coulson

Ceviche as a concept. It’s brutally hot here in Louisiana already, and ceviche is simply a perfect summer dish. — Chris Branch

Talking to a friend on best true crime podcasts this week I found myself saying, “Serial is the brand benchmark but ‘In The Dark’ Season 2 melted my brain.” So I’ll type it here. Listen and tell me if I’m wrong. — Chris Sprow

Do Knicks and Timberwolves fans need solace? They both won the Karl-Anthony Towns-Julius Randle trade.

Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Mark Lazerus’ column on the Stars firing Pete DeBoer.

Most-read on the website yesterday: The live blog of Coco Gauff’s win.

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(Top photo: Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)

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