Pete Crow-Armstrong has yet to collect his first Major League hit since being called up on Monday, but he seems to be doing just about everything else. Last night, “everything else” was two spectacular catches and his first RBI.
In the first inning, Crow-Armstrong made a friend (enemy) in Nolan Jones, when Jones flew out to left center. This is a tough play for anyone—an over-the-shoulder leaping catch that sent him into the wall—but even more so for a rookie under brighter lights in an unfamiliar park. Regardless, Crow-Armstrong made it look easy.
In the second inning, he got to do a little work on the other side of the plate. He hit into a force out at second, but scored outfield neighbor Seiya Suzuki with his efforts. He was then thrown out, having misread a ball in the dirt from Chris Flexen as an opportunity to steal, but it’s fine, because later, he did this:
If possible, his work in the sixth inning put his earlier catch to shame. Jones was up to bat again, but still couldn’t get the best of Crow-Armstrong. It’s an instant-classic play, the kind you’d see replayed over and over on SportsCenter Top 10 Plays of the Day. Even the broadcasters sound astonished—there was no reason that shouldn’t have dropped in, giving Jones some semblance of mercy. After all, he hit to the place where doubles are hit.
Instead, we see the catch, seamlessly transitioned and played off with the suaveness of Trea Turner’s infamous slide, and the humility of a newcomer to the league who doesn’t want to get cocky, not yet.
In the numerous instant replays just following the catch, we also see a couple of interesting numbers pop up. I’m not a math person by any means, but let’s do a couple calculations, just for the hell of it.
We’ll round up. In five seconds, Crow-Armstrong covered 100 feet. 20 feet a second, that’s easy. We’ve all passed elementary division.
But wait, there’s more! While 20 feet a second is more than respectable (certainly higher than my top speed by an embarrassing margin) that’s nowhere close to describing Crow-Armstrong’s powers of acceleration.
Outfield coverage isn’t something typically measured when determining fastest players, because frankly, it’s much harder. A baserunner knows where first base is; it’s where it was last time, and not going anywhere. An outfielder has to do some fairly complex math while he’s sprinting, reading the ball, how hard it’s hit and which way it’s curving. So it’s not really fair to compare Crow-Armstrong’s speed to the sprint speed leaderboard in this case. Let’s go ahead and do it anyway:
In just his second Major League game, Pete Crow-Armstrong might just be the fastest guy there is. I’d call that flying indeed.
The full article can be found here.