Short-handed Dodgers may be forced to make roster moves after Astros sweep
Three of Roberts' four right-handed hitting reserves — Teoscar Hernández, Kiké Hernández and switch-hitter Tommy Edman — were unavailable because of minor injuries, which could force the Dodgers to make a roster move to bolster their bench depth before the series opener at Milwaukee.
That forced left fielder Michael Conforto, second baseman Hyeseong Kim and catcher Dalton Rushing, all lefties, to bat against Sousa and King, who threw scoreless innings to help the Astros sweep a three-game series in Dodger Stadium for the first time since 2008.
'Today, we had one player available, and that was the catcher,' Roberts said, referring to All-Star starter Will Smith, who is healthy but was given the day off. 'That's not a good feeling.'
Teoscar Hernández, who is batting .257 with a .758 OPS, 14 homers and 54 RBIs, fouled a ball off his left foot. A scan of the foot was negative, but he was too sore to play and will be reevaluated.
Edman, who is batting .239 with a .718 OPS, 10 homers and 38 RBIs, fractured his toe when he fouled a ball off his right foot, but Roberts said the utility player should be able to play through the injury.
'It's kind of per his (pain) tolerance,' Roberts said, 'so I don't see an (injured list) situation.'
Kiké Hernández, a utility player who is batting .195 with eight homers and 22 RBIs in 71 games, has been playing with left-elbow discomfort for about a month and seems the most likely of the three to go in the injured list.
'It doesn't affect the defense, but his swing has been compromised — yesterday (Saturday), it came to a head as far as swinging, and so we stayed away from him today (Sunday),' Roberts said. 'So with these three guys, we're trying to figure out where we're at.'
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How the Chicago Cubs' Pete Crow-Armstrong, a 1st-time All-Star at 23, has become elite in every facet
Pete Crow-Armstrong can trace the first definitive moment in his baseball career to nearly 11 years ago. The Chicago Cubs All-Star center fielder refers to the sequence as the core memory when he realized he possessed a special talent for the sport. Part of USA Baseball's 12U squad, Crow-Armstrong faced off against Masyn Winn, then a top young pitcher and now the St. Louis Cardinals shortstop. The two battled for eight pitches before Crow-Armstrong took Winn deep for a home run. 'I really just did that off him?' Crow-Armstrong recalled thinking. 'I believed in myself fully after that. I guess it took Masyn Winn to give me a little bit of confidence.' It was the first time Crow-Armstrong played in an elite tournament against players from a different state, having played largely to that point in local leagues in California. His combination of speed, defense and contact hitting quickly made him one of the top high school prospects coming out of Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles, and the New York Mets drafted him in the first round (No. 19) in 2020. Crow-Armstrong, now 23, has been on a meteoric trajectory since — though not without challenges. He likely wouldn't be a Cub if it weren't for a shoulder injury that limited him to six professional games with the Mets' Low-A team in April 2021 before Cubs President Jed Hoyer acquired him for shortstop Javier Báez and pitcher Trevor Williams at the July 2021 trade deadline. His ascension to making his major-league debut in September 2023 included earning recognition as the Cubs' consensus top-ranked prospect. But his first taste of the big leagues sent him into the 2023-24 offseason still seeking his first major-league hit and an understanding of the adjustments and routine needed to not only stick in the majors but thrive. 'A lot of people in this game have an element of self-critique that works,' Crow-Armstrong told the Tribune. 'I'm probably a part of the group that is a little harder on themselves and feels like they need it, though. That also doesn't work in this game. I've definitely started to learn how to give myself a bit of a break.' His work behind the scenes over the last two years set up Crow-Armstrong for his breakout 2025 season: a five-tool player who was the first in the majors this year to reach both 25 home runs and 25 stolen bases. Fans voted him in as a starter for his first All-Star Game appearance, which he'll make Tuesday night in Atlanta. His parents, Ashley Crow and Matt Armstrong, will be there to watch. 'The damage he is doing is really, really impressive,' Hoyer said. 'He's worked really hard to close up the holes that he had.' Crow-Armstrong embodies the all-around elite qualities teams try to find. And he's just getting started. The home run power Crow-Armstrong has tapped into alters the perceived ceiling of his potential. The Cubs envisioned him producing more power as he continued to mature physically. But nobody — not even Crow-Armstrong — expected him to put up the home run numbers he delivered through their first 94 games. He entered Saturday's game just one homer shy of the single-season franchise record for a player 23 or younger, set by Kris Bryant with 26 in 2015. 'The homers, like just the number itself, is a little funny to look at,' Crow-Armstrong said. 'It's new for me.' His five multihomer games through Friday were tied with New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge and trailed only Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh's MLB-leading eight. It's only the sixth time since 1876 that a Cubs hitter recorded at least five multihomer games in the team's first 100 games. Crow-Armstrong reached the mark Thursday in Game 93, joining Derrek Lee (2005), Sammy Sosa (1996, 1998, 2001) and Hack Wilson (1929), per team historian Ed Hartig. Hitting coach Dustin Kelly initially approached Crow-Armstrong last season about using a slightly bigger bat. The timing ultimately wasn't right; he was finally in an offensive groove after adding a leg kick in late July, and Kelly didn't want to mess with anything. But in spring training, Crow-Armstrong agreed to try out a 34-inch bat, a half-inch longer than his typical lumber. He liked the feel and has continued to use it. How much of an impact the bat size has had on his results isn't fully clear, though Kelly noted: 'The bigger the bat, the heavier the bat, the more mass behind it, the harder you hit balls — that's physics.' Crow-Armstrong attributes producing more pop to the bigger bat. 'I don't know if it's a coverage thing or what. I haven't really thought about it since the first day I used the bat,' he said. 'But I would say it's definitely a big reason as to why I'm probably seeing more of the balls go over the fence.' Crow-Armstrong's vertical plate coverage has been a nightmare for pitchers. His quick hands and bat path allow the left-handed hitter to get to balls well above and below the zone — and do damage on them. The two lowest balls hit for home runs in the majors this year belong to Crow-Armstrong. He took Brewers reliever Joel Payamps deep on a slider just 0.86 feet above the ground May 2 in Milwaukee, and on May 28 at Wrigley Field, he connected on Colorado Rockies right-hander Tanner Gordon's cutter 1.08 feet from the dirt for a solo shot. Over the last two seasons, Crow-Armstrong is responsible for the five lowest-hit balls for a home run by a Cubs hitter. 'Guys are attacking him like a star player now, and he's getting pitched really tough,' Kelly said. 'He's still really aggressive. We know that he's going to be aggressive. Pete almost scares people into the zone a lot of times because they don't have a spot in the zone where they can miss. 'So they know that they have to throw strikes at some point, and he's willing to punish pretty much all parts of the zone. He's really forcing pitchers to have to really think about, where am I willing to miss with Pete?' Crow-Armstrong has showed he can handle elevated stuff, too, something he initially struggled with when he first came up. In a lefty-on-lefty situation against the Pittsburgh Pirates' Andrew Heaney on June 12, he hit a fastball 3.90 feet high for a no-doubt, go-ahead home run. At the time he hit it, it was the highest pitch that went for a homer in the majors this year. That home run off Heaney also represented the third-highest pitch a Cubs hitter has homered on since the start of the Statcast era in 2015, behind Anthony Rizzo (3.94 feet) on Aug. 26, 2017, and Báez (3.91 feet) on June 2, 2018. Cubs coach Quintin Berry didn't hesitate to pick his favorite defensive play by Crow-Armstrong this year. The totality of the sequence — the distance covered, the difficulty of the play, the wow factor — all stood out within the moment June 5 at Nationals Park in Washington. In the bottom of the fifth inning of a scoreless game, Alex Call pulled a Matthew Boyd pitch to left-center field that, off the bat, appeared headed for extra bases. Crow-Armstrong ran 107 feet to make a running catch before slamming into the padded wall. The ball had a 5% catch probability — one of 10 five-star catches by Crow-Armstrong this year. A catch earns five stars when an outfielder makes a successful play on a ball that had a 25% or lower probability of being caught. Crow-Armstrong has converted an absurd 66.7% (10 of 15) of five-star opportunities. Among the other 42 outfielders with double-digit five-star opportunities, the Boston Red Sox's Wilyer Abreu owns the next-best conversion rate at 26.8% (4 of 14). No other outfielder has more than four five-star catches. Besides Crow-Armstrong, 18 outfielders have had 13 or more five-star opportunities; they made a combined 14 catches in 249 chances (5.6%). 'The problem is there's walls that stop him,' Berry told the Tribune. 'If there were no walls, he'd catch everything.' When Berry joined the Cubs in the offseason as their third-base coach, among his tasks to learn the new players under his tutelage involved watching defensive video of Crow-Armstrong. He noticed an inconsistency with his prep step, at times being flat-footed. He wasn't the fastest-reacting center fielder in the game, but as Berry told him, 'Dude, you can be.' 'Because everything else — his metrics are off the charts,' Berry explained. Column: Why Chicago Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong is content with just being himselfFirst-base coach Jose Javier put together clips of the Nationals' Jacob Young, the Brewers' Christian Yelich and the Mets' Jose Siri and showed Crow-Armstrong the video. Throughout spring training, he worked to lock in his pre-pitch rhythm. He focused on getting his feet moving as the pitch was delivered to create momentum and not be stagnant when taking his first step. Crow-Armstrong said former third-base coach Willie Harris, who also worked with the outfielders, tried to get him to implement a similar approach with his footwork but he didn't feel comfortable when he tried it. Sometimes it takes another voice and perspective, in this case Berry's, to shift a player's understanding of why something works. 'Basically he was beating people up with one arm behind the back instead of using both hands,' Berry said. 'Now we freed up the other hand, and he's covering ground like crazy. 'He's probably the most special center fielder I've ever seen. The amount of difficult balls he makes look so easy, the amount of ground he's covering is unreal.' For as much attention as Crow-Armstrong's offensive numbers understandably have garnered, Cubs manager Craig Counsell is more impressed by his defensive development. His throwing accuracy has greatly improved, and he's making better reads on when to attempt to throw out a runner versus getting the ball to the cutoff man. There were moments last year when he got his mitt on a fly ball, regardless of the difficulty, but wasn't able to complete the catch. It's something Counsell noticed, too, and the contrast this season has been undeniable. 'It's in a lot of ways more exciting because the defense just feels more stable,' Counsell said, comparing it with Crow-Armstrong's offensive development. 'One of the things he's done great is he gets to balls and he catches them. There he's been so much better. 'And whether that's the first step that's made some of those plays easier, that's absolutely a possibility. But he puts the glove on the ball and he's catching it — and that, with his range, is a wonderful trait.' Speed can create chaos. Crow-Armstrong's mere presence on base at times causes defenders to glitch during routine sequences. 'It's an obligation to be able to really home in on that part of the game,' Crow-Armstrong said, 'because taking advantage of your athleticism doesn't always mean just stealing a base or playing defense. Being able to take someone's focus off of the basic play is huge.' The increase in power, and by extension extra-base hits, hasn't created as many chances for Crow-Armstrong to steal bases. He had 21 doubles, four triples and 25 home runs in 389 plate appearances through Thursday, compared with 13 doubles, six triples and 10 homers in 410 PAs in 2024. When he does get on first base, he's trying to understand the moments to commit to a steal attempt. 'He's still very green in the way he thinks about base stealing,' Berry said. 'Once the game starts slowing down for him and he can read what's happening, he's going to be unstoppable. 'Right now he just knows he's so good, he just wants to go. But once he really starts understanding what the pitchers are trying to do with him, you might see him get caught once all season.' The evolution of advanced metrics in the last 10 years has led to better ways to quantify a player's baserunning ability beyond stolen-base numbers. Statcast's net bases gained statistic is the sum of advances gained and outs created by the runner. Crow-Armstrong's 13 net bases gained through Thursday were tied with the Kansas City Royals' Bobby Witt Jr. for fifth in the majors. Fangraphs' baserunning stat (BsR), which includes stolen bases and caught stealings, ranks him tied for first with the Minnesota Twins' Byron Buxton at 5.8. 'The growth really is just that the league is terrified of him, honestly — like, that's just the facts, and that's probably a little excessive,' Counsell clarified. 'But they're very respectful of his speed and how that changes things during the course of the game.' Crow-Armstrong believes his base-stealing development and baserunning ability took a big step forward last year by developing a mentality of keeping his body moving forward, leading to an uptick in confidence. It was a message former first-base coach Mike Napoli preached to him, and the concept has been reiterated as recently as the end of June, when Crow-Armstrong discussed the topic in the dugout with veteran Jon Berti during a series in Houston. 'The confidence in just taking the bag — I don't know what it's like in other clubhouses — but my whole time I've been in the big leagues with the Cubs, back to '23, it's just about the work,' Crow-Armstrong said. 'You're not necessarily going to find a tip or a tell or a window on every pitcher. But being able to pick little pieces of the game up … knowing when to run, picking your spots and getting to know your teammates as hitters, like when do they like you to run. So there's a lot.' Entering the weekend, Crow-Armstrong's 27 steals ranked third in the majors. He had been caught just four times. Yet he isn't satisfied with what he has shown in the running game. 'I would be very disappointed in myself if I felt like I was plateauing in that area right now,' he said. 'It's definitely exciting knowing that there's more in the tank — and there definitely is too. There's a lot that I can get better at with it still.' Crow-Armstrong glanced at the gray jersey hanging in his road locker with the red No. 4 popping off the back beneath his name. He isn't quite ready to thank Hoyer for the number change from 52 to the slicker-looking 4, a switch Crow-Armstrong was forced to make when Hoyer sank a shot on the basketball hoop next to the agility field at the Cubs spring training complex. 'I'm still a little bitter that I lost the bet,' Crow-Armstrong said, grinning. It's impossible to go to a Cubs road game without seeing No. 4 Crow-Armstrong jerseys, let alone the multitude of fans wearing them at Wrigley Field. He still gets thrown by seeing how many people don his name and number. Sometimes on his drive home from Wrigley, he spots someone with his jersey and thinks about his parents. 'It's wild, I don't know how else you describe it,' Matt Armstrong said of fans wearing his son's jersey. 'It doesn't seem real.' Since opening day, Crow-Armstrong's jersey has been MLB's 18th-biggest seller on Fanatics websites. He is the only Cub to crack the top 20. All-Star voting helped Crow-Armstrong contextualize his popularity outside of Cubs fans. He received the fourth-most votes — more than 3 million — among all National League players during the first phase of voting, then finished second behind the Atlanta Braves' Ronald Acuña Jr. among NL outfielders during the final round to earn the start in the Midsummer Classic. 'A little wider recognition from other people is one of the cooler things that I've kind of come to understand,' Crow-Armstrong said. The 'M-V-Pete!' chants from the bleacher bums in center field has been a regular tune welcoming him to his defensive position at Wrigley. Crow-Armstrong embraces the on-field showmanship aspect of the game. It has played a role in how his popularity has taken off. 'We have a very serious, very hardworking, disciplined group,' Hoyer said, 'and having a guy with stars on his hair and having a guy with some flair to him I think is a good thing. It's good for all of them and they've done a great job embracing it. It's good for the dynamic because you don't want all of one type of personality. It's nice to have some flash. 'I think Pete feels like he has incredible potential, so I don't think he's surprised at how he's doing. He's not shocked by what's going on and therefore he's able to handle it. This is the expectation for himself.' Column: How Pete Crow-Armstrong's impromptu thank-you speech brought Wrigley Field community closerBefore and after nearly every home game, Crow-Armstrong stops at the barrier next to the players parking lot where fans wait to get autographs. He makes it a priority to sign for kids, many of whom are wearing his jersey. 'There's definitely days that I'd rather just put my hood on and tie it around my face and walk to the car,' he said. 'But the game is bigger than that and the game is going to be around for a long time — hopefully forever — and I will not. 'So I see so much value in the younger presence being in our game. I love signing for the kids because that's who will be continuing this game for me and for us.' He understands how special those interactions can be for young fans. He remembers going onto the field at Dodger Stadium at 5 years old and meeting Nomar Garciaparra, and briefly crossing paths at age 9 with Cam Newton and chatting with the quarterback during his Heisman Trophy season at Auburn. 'It's hard not to (bleeping) love that, right?' Crow-Armstrong said. 'But seeing the kids just freaking out over everybody that walks out, it's very enticing. That's where the future of the game lies is in the little kids. Core memories are cool, and I hope I can provide one of those for some people out there.' Veteran right-hander Jameson Taillon has noticed how, even after losses, Crow-Armstrong makes an effort to connect with fans postgame. That type of commitment reminds Taillon of what he saw from Judge's interactions with Yankees fans while they were teammates in New York. 'With that success comes a little bit of responsibility for Pete to be a voice and a face,' Taillon told the Tribune. 'There's a lot of kids that look up to him, kids making signs. He handles it really well and I think he'll continue to grow into it.' One of the most exciting parts of Crow-Armstrong's performance this year is the knowledge he still can get better in every facet. That prospect is thrilling, that is, for Crow-Armstrong and the Cubs. Opposing teams, especially pitchers, won't be as thrilled about that possibility. 'You're getting a glimpse of what type of player he is and not what he can be,' Kelly said. 'We're seeing an incredible player right now and you just wonder, 'Oh, my gosh, how much better does this get?' And I still think there's room in there for him to get better.' While he appreciates his overall performance at the All-Star break, Crow-Armstrong isn't satisfied by what he has shown. Limiting the length of offensive slumps already has been on display this year. But Crow-Armstrong knows there are areas he expects to improve over time. He's well aware of his propensity to be a free swinger and believes he can develop a better approach with experience. There's no denying, though, that the Cubs have a budding superstar. 'The thing that blows me away about superstar players is just the consistency,' Taillon said. 'For Pete, not just to do it this year but to show up next year and be hungry and keep repeating it, posting, plan every day — that's where the really great ones come from.'
