On September 24, 2026, Pete Crow-Armstrong walked into one of the shortest, heaviest lists in baseball history. The Cubs center fielder became the seventh player ever to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season — joining a club that took nearly four decades to fill seven spots.
The Full List of 40-40 Members
- Jose Canseco – Oakland Athletics, 1988
- Barry Bonds – 1996
- Alex Rodriguez – 1998
- Alfonso Soriano – 2006
- Ronald Acuña Jr. – 2023
- Shohei Ohtani – 2024
- Pete Crow-Armstrong – 2026
Canseco did it first in 1988. Then Bonds, A-Rod, and Soriano followed over the next two decades. After that came 17 years of silence — until Acuña brought the club back to life in 2023 and Ohtani matched it in 2024. Now Crow-Armstrong makes it seven.
This isn’t a barrier that falls every few years. Elite power and elite speed almost never live in the same body at the same time. When they do, it ends up on this list.
Why This 40-40 Is No Accident
The raw line tells the story fast: 45 home runs, 107 RBI, a .280 AVG and a .950 OPS across 159 games. That alone would be an All-Star season for most hitters. Add exactly 40 stolen bases and you have something the sport produces once or twice a generation.
Statcast backs every bit of it. Crow-Armstrong’s average exit velocity sits at 90.6 mph (77th percentile), his barrel rate is 13.6% (91st percentile) — meaning nearly 14 out of every 100 balls he hits carry the perfect combination of speed and launch angle to do real damage — and his hard-hit rate is 48.7% (89th percentile). His bat speed averages 75.1 mph, landing in the 84th percentile league-wide.
The speed side is just as clean. His sprint speed ranks in the 96th percentile across all of MLB. The stolen bases aren’t luck or opportunity — they’re the natural output of one of the fastest players in the game.
His xwOBA of .376 (95th percentile) ties it all together. That figure — what Statcast says he should be producing based on the quality of his contact — confirms the numbers aren’t a product of cheap hits or fortunate bounces. The contact is genuinely elite.
The Weak Spots Are Real — and Manageable
No player is flawless, and Crow-Armstrong is no exception. His strikeout rate sits in the 22nd percentile, and his chase rate on bad pitches is in the 23rd — bottom quartile in both. Those are real holes.
But with an OBP of .373 backed by 82 walks across 712 plate appearances, the strikeouts don’t sink him. When he makes contact, the damage is significant enough to absorb the misses.
The Numbers Behind a Historic Season
- Plate appearances: 712
- Home runs: 45
- Stolen bases: 40
- RBI: 107
- AVG: .280
- OPS: .950
- OBP: .373
- Walks: 82
- xwOBA: .376 (95th percentile)
- Barrel rate: 13.6% (91st percentile)
- Hard-hit rate: 48.7% (89th percentile)
- Exit velocity: 90.6 mph (77th percentile)
- Bat speed: 75.1 mph (84th percentile)
- Sprint speed: 96th percentile
The 40-40 Club doesn’t measure perfection. It measures a combination of abilities that baseball produces once or twice per generation. In 2026, in Chicago, that combination has a name.
