Shohei Ohtani and Pete Crow-Armstrong locked in NL MVP duel

For most of the season this wasn't really a race. Shohei Ohtani was the presumptive NL MVP by default, the two-way unicorn doing things no one else in baseball can do. Then Pete Crow-Armstrong showed up in center field for the Cubs and refused to go away, and now the two are running even in real time, in the same building, on the same swing.

Codify

@CodifyBaseball

Shohei Ohtani hits a leadoff homer and then Pete Crow-Armstrong counters with a leadoff homer!

That embed is from Wednesday's Cubs-Dodgers finale, and it's not hyperbole. Ohtani led off the game with a home run. Crow-Armstrong answered with one of his own. Jon Heyman called it what it was: Mano a Mano (2085071387186614756). By the time the dust settled, both leadoff men had gone deep twice in the same game, something that's happened in MLB history only a handful of times ever, and the Cubs completed a 3-game sweep of the defending champs with a 7-6 win, improving to 66-49 while the Dodgers slipped to 69-46.

The numbers back up the eye test. Crow-Armstrong is hitting.288/.386/.552 with 26 homers, 28 stolen bases and 78 runs scored. Ohtani is right there at.297/.399/.554 with 26 homers of his own, though with far fewer steals at 6. Ohtani's case has always leaned heavily on the two-way angle, but he hasn't taken the mound since July 3 because of lingering left knee inflammation, and the club isn't rushing him back before September. That's opened the door for Crow-Armstrong's all-around game, glove included, to close the gap.

Codify

@CodifyBaseball

Most Fielding Runs, MLB CFs Since 2024: Pete Crow-Armstrong, 60 🤯 Ceddanne Rafaela, 40 Jacob Young, 40 Brenton Doyle, 24 Michael Harris II, 23

Crow-Armstrong isn't just hitting his way into the conversation. He leads all MLB center fielders in fielding runs since 2024 by a wide margin, and that defensive value is exactly the kind of thing that used to be Ohtani's exclusive advantage when he was healthy and pitching every fifth day. Take away the mound work, even temporarily, and PCA's glove starts to look like a real tiebreaker.

The betting markets noticed first. Crow-Armstrong briefly flipped to the outright favorite during Wednesday's game before Ohtani's second homer pulled the odds back to a dead heat at -110 apiece, the first time all season Ohtani hasn't been the clear MVP favorite. Ken Rosenthal made the race the lead topic on his podcast with Alanna Rizzo the very next day.

Ken Rosenthal

@Ken_Rosenthal

Fair Territory with @alannarizzo! *Ohtani/PCA MVP race *Red Sox’s surge *Dodgers’ slide *Braves reversal *Which sellers did best *Dudes, dorks *More YouTube: t.co/XY2bpFKnLj Apple: t.co/TAzNONwoO6 Spotify: t.co/lqPOm0gE5Y

Jon Heyman put it best afterward, calling him M-V-Pete making a race of it against the previously incomparable Ohtani (2085484868188725519). Incomparable is the key word — for years Ohtani's dual-threat production made this award a non-conversation. Now, with the knee injury clouding his pitching timeline and Crow-Armstrong playing the best all-around baseball of his career at 24, the rest of the NL race finally has a real second name attached to it. Whether Ohtani gets back on the mound in time to reclaim the edge, or Crow-Armstrong just keeps doing damage in the box and the outfield, this one's going down to the wire.