The Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals boast one of the most time-honored rivalries in Major League Baseball. While the two teams are presently trending in opposite directions – the Cubs have been one of the game’s best teams thus far in 2025, while the Cardinals are presently below .500 – there’s a compelling rivalry “writ small” in center field.
There’s another layer to things when two natural rivals have promising young players manning the same position and, in this instance, enjoying breakout campaigns at the same time. We speak of the emerging Interstate-55 rivalry in center field between Pete Crow-Armstrong of the Cubs and Victor Scott II of the Cardinals.
This seems a timely matter because Crow-Armstrong right now ranks third in the National League in WAR with a mark of 2.0, meaning he’s been one of the best overall players in baseball thus far. Scott, meantime, is 10th on that same list with a WAR of 1.4, and during Sunday’s doubleheader sweep of the New York Mets, he went a combined 3 for 6 with a pair of walks and this miracle robbery that wound up mattering quite a bit insofar as the final score is concerned:
To be sure, Crow-Armstrong profiles as the superior player right now and thus moving forward. PCA was the higher draft pick, was consistently a higher-ranked prospect in the minors, presently shows much more power potential, and is more than a year younger than Scott. However, those substantial advantages don’t mean all is decided. It’s fully within the range of possibilities that Scott closes the gap between them or even surpasses Crow-Armstrong at some point. Such knowledge, though, is years off. For now, appreciation of both is in order.
In Scott’s case, his multi-faceted strides in 2025 come after a deeply disappointing 2024. In the spring of 2024, he was pressed into regular duty by injuries, and he wasn’t ready for them, in part because he’d been skipped past Triple-A entirely. He struggled badly at the plate in St. Louis and didn’t fare much better after being demoted to Memphis. Then, over the coming winter, Scott relocated to the Cardinals’ training complex in Jupiter, Fla., and devoted himself to improving in the field and at the plate. He now gets better reads in center and trusts his first step. At the plate, incorporating a stride has made him far more athletic, and he’s realized impressive strides at pitch recognition. Right now, Scott boasts an OPS+ of 117, and – critically for someone with his speed – he has an OBP of .356, drawing walks in 10.1% of his plate appearances. Scott leads the majors in bunt singles with five, he’s stolen 12 bases in as many attempts this season, and through the first 84 games of his big-league career he’s yet to hit into a double play.
As for PCA, our own Matt Snyder recently explored his ongoing breakout and noted that Crow-Armstrong’s value in the field and on the bases has never been in doubt. Rather, the bat was the question, and 2025 to date has yielded very encouraging returns on that front. At this writing, PCA has 20 extra-base hits in 35 games and a 140 OPS+. He’s backed up the thump with a high quality of batted balls, especially when it comes to his knack for finding the barrel (he’s in the 78th percentile among big-league hitters in terms of registering the ideal combination of exit velocity and launch angle off the bat). There are concerns about PCA’s extreme tendency to chase pitches outside the strike zone and his low walk rate, but his capacity to punish the ball is legitimate. Elsewhere, he’s 12 for 14 in steals, and he’s hit into zero double plays this season.
The good news for PCA and Scott is that even when their bats aren’t at peak, their elite defense and base-running provide an all-but-unshakeable foundation of value that make them “high floor” players. Speaking of which, Statcast puts Crow-Armstrong in the 99th and 100th percentile of base-running and fielding value, respectively, this season. Scott is in the 99th and 95th percentile in those measures. In related matters, Scott is in the 100th percentile in sprint speed, while PCA is in the 96th. When they are hitting, as, again, they both are in 2025, then they’re All-Star-caliber in Scott’s case and MVP-caliber in PCA’s case.
In the interest of equal time, let’s pair Scott’s defensive highlight above with one from PCA, albeit a very different one:
This is something the writer likes to call “The Andruw Jones Experience.” It’s a catch the difficulty of which is submerged within the mellow smoothness with which the fielder made it. Not only did PCA make a catch that another big-league center fielder failed to make on an effectively identical batted ball, but PCA also did it without lunging or laying out for it. He made it look more routine than highlight-worthy, which speaks to his reads and footspeed. In this way, the miracle of technicolor television sometimes punishes PCA (and Scott, too) because he makes it look too easy. A fly-catcher with lesser range – and almost all fly-catchers have lesser range than Crow-Armstrong does – makes the tape because he requires a crowd-rousing dive to reach that ball.
Opinions will vary, but it says here that slick-fielding speedsters who man center and employ some daring on the bases are perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing sub-genre of ballplayers. On top of providing quality baseball entertainment, PCA and VS2 are also very good players. Consider it a tidy bonus that they play for time-honored arch rivals who share a division and swaths of the same territory. By any objective measure, PCA has the edge right now, but this debate figures to be a years-long one and perhaps an ever-changing one. But keep it Midwest Nice, people.
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