Pete Crow-Armstrong’s bat has been a revelation for the Chicago Cubs so far during the 2025 season.

But don’t let his offensive prowess overshadow the elite work he has produced in the field.

Despite playing in an outfield with a pair of Gold Glovers to either side of him — Ian Happ has won the award in left field for three consecutive seasons and 2022 Gold Glover Kyle Tucker patrols right field — there is no doubt that Crow-Armstrong is not only the best defensive outfielder in Chicago, but has a case to the best defensive outfielder in the big leagues.

Since the start of the 2024 season, no outfielder has recorded more outs above average than Crow-Armstrong with 21, which is tied with Washington’s Jacob Young for the top mark in MLB.

[More: Chris Flexen joins Cubs pitching staff, Tom Cosgrove optioned]

According to MLB’s Statcast, outs above average is the cumulative effect of all individual plays a fielder has been credited or debited with, making it a range-based metric of fielding skill that accounts for the number of plays made and the difficulty of each play. For example, a fielder who catches a 25% Out Probability play gets +.75; one who fails to make the play gets -.25.

One of the biggest areas Crow-Armstrong has improved over his three years in the majors is his reaction and jump to balls off the bat. In 2023, his jumps were two feet better than average. In 2024, it was three feet above the mean and this year, he is an absurd five feet better than average, which is the second-best in the Majors behind only Boston’s Ceddanne Rafaela.

Those big jumps are why he was able to make catches like this one on Tommy Edman vs the Dodgers on April 23, where the California native was able to get a preposterous 14-foot jump over the average outfielder to make a 10% probability catch feel like a routine play.

Combine that with speed that ranks in the 95 percentile of baseball and a hot bat — he has hit .400 since April 13 and .284/.325/.868 slash line with 17 extra base hits and 12 stolen bases overall in 2025 — and Crow-Armstrong is well on his way to his first career All-Star appearance and possibly a Gold Glove award.