That’s decent, but I don’t know if I’d call it plus power or anything; Crow-Armstrong’s EV90 in 2025 was 81st out of 145 qualified hitters. That’s where the other two changes come in. As a rookie, PCA had a 79.2% Z-Contact%. Anything below 80% in that mark is survivable, but it’s hard to thrive in that range without truly elite power. In 2025, he raised his in-zone contact rate to 83.8%.
Third: He is getting the absolute maximum out of what contact he makes. The most valuable batted balls, in general, are hit in the air and to the pull side. In 2024, Crow-Armstrong put 19.3% of his batted balls in that direction, which is above average, even good. In 2025, that number was 30.2%, which was the seventh-highest figure out of 251 players on Baseball Savant’s leaderboard.
Crow-Armstrong hit 31 home runs last year because he got the absolute maximum out of his plate discipline and quality-of-contact numbers. Add in the defense and the baserunning, and I think this might literally be the best all-around baseball player you could have with a 4.5% walk rate and a .247 batting average.
But he’s still a player with a .247 batting average and a 4.5% walk rate. Or, to use the more legible figure I mentioned above, a .287 OBP. Last year, Crow-Armstrong made more outs per plate appearance than Nick Castellanos, Lenyn Sosa, and Ke’Bryan Hayes. Is it possible to be a franchise player if that’s true? We’ll find out.