Pete Crow-Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez put together two of the best regular seasons you’ll see in a long time. Crow-Armstrong hit 45 home runs with a .943 OPS for the Cubs. Alvarez won the AL batting title (.316 AVG), posted the best OPS in all of baseball (1.033), and finished with a 6.8 WAR — tied for the best in the American League. Then the playoffs arrived, and neither one showed up.
In the Wild Card Series on September 29 and 30, 2026, both MVP favorites were swept — unable to move the needle when their teams needed them most. Zero runs scored. Zero extra-base hits. Combined.
Chicago Goes Silent in San Diego
The Cubs entered the postseason as the highest-scoring team in MLB during the regular season. What happened at Petco Park was the complete opposite of that.
The San Diego Padres won Game 1, 8-0, and Game 2, 4-1, silencing the most feared offense in the National League in the process. Crow-Armstrong finished the series 0-for-7 with four strikeouts. His teammate Alex Bregman went 0-for-8. Together — the two best hitters in Chicago’s lineup — they combined to go 0-for-15 in the series. The entire Cubs offense scored just one run across 18 innings on eight hits total.
The knockout blow came in the fourth inning of Game 2: a two-run home run by Gavin Sheets off reliever Daniel Palencia that ended any realistic hope of a comeback.
San Diego attacked Crow-Armstrong with high fastballs and went after Bregman with breaking balls away. The plan worked from the first pitch to the last. For a hitter who averaged a 90.6 mph exit velocity in the regular season and posted a 13.3% barrel rate — 90th percentile league-wide — going hitless in a playoff series feels almost surreal.
Alvarez Couldn’t Save Houston Either
In the American League, the story was just as stunning. The Chicago White Sox swept the Astros in Houston, winning 6-3 and 7-3. Nobody saw that coming from a team facing Yordan Alvarez, who closed the regular season with a 1.033 OPS — the highest in all of MLB — and came close to winning the Triple Crown.
Alvarez finished the series 1-for-8, no extra-base hits, two strikeouts. The White Sox had a specific plan to neutralize him, and it worked. The decisive moment came in the fifth inning of Game 2 — runners on base, game on the line — and Alvarez hit a harmless liner to left field. That was it.
The loss was Houston’s ninth consecutive postseason defeat at home, and the second time in three years the Astros have been swept in the AL Wild Card round.
Still, Alvarez’s situation is different from Crow-Armstrong’s in one important way. His individual season was flawless. The Astros came into the Wild Card with an injury-riddled rotation and none of the bullpen depth that defined their dynasty years. No hitter wins a playoff series by himself.
For the White Sox, the win was historic in its own right: their first postseason series victory in 21 years, since they swept these same Astros in the 2005 World Series — at what is now called Daikin Park.
Crow-Armstrong in October: A Pattern That Can’t Be Ignored Anymore
For Alvarez, this Wild Card is a painful one-off in a postseason résumé that includes real accomplishments. For Crow-Armstrong, the numbers are telling a longer story.
In 10 career playoff games, he has 5 hits in 34 at-bats — a .147 average — with zero extra-base hits and 16 strikeouts. The same hitter who posted a .374 xwOBA (94th percentile) in the regular season and stole 41 bases turns into a completely different player in October.
Statcast offers a clue: his squared-up rate sits at the 15th percentile league-wide, and his chase rate — how often he swings at pitches outside the zone — is at the 23rd percentile. In the regular season, the quality of his contact when he connects masks those numbers. In the playoffs, where opponents spend days studying every weakness and pitchers execute with greater precision, those gaps get exposed.
Crow-Armstrong acknowledged his performance after the elimination. The Cubs now head into the offseason with an uncomfortable question: how far can a team go when its best player — 24 years old and incredibly talented — still hasn’t shown he can perform when October is on the line?
Crow-Armstrong’s 2026 Numbers by the Book
- 726 plate appearances
- 45 home runs, 107 RBI
- AVG: .280 | OPS: .942
- xwOBA: .374 — 94th percentile (what Statcast says he should be hitting based on contact quality)
- Exit velocity: 90.6 mph avg — 78th percentile
- Barrel rate: 13.3% — 90th percentile
- Hard-hit rate: 48.6% (balls hit 95+ mph) — 88th percentile
- Bat speed: 75.1 mph avg — 85th percentile
- Sprint speed: 95th percentile
- Squared-up rate: 15th percentile — one of the lowest in MLB
The tools are undeniable. The October question mark is real. Both things can be true at the same time.
