Pete Crow-Armstrong did not wait for Tuesday night to make his point about Ceddanne Rafaela. As the All-Stars gathered at Citizens Bank Park on Monday ahead of the Midsummer Classic, the Cubs center fielder said he is a huge fan of anybody who can play multiple positions and singled out Rafaela as a Gold Glover with almost nothing to criticize.
The praise landed because it came from one of the other young center fielders sharing the stage in Philadelphia. Rafaela and Crow-Armstrong spent time together when they arrived Sunday night, and Rafaela said Crow-Armstrong greeted him with a line that sounded half joke, half tribute: “Hey, how are you? It’s my favorite player.” Rafaela said he answered, “You’re mine, too.”
For anyone looking for the baseball reason the exchange mattered, the numbers were already there. Through Sunday, Andy Pages led all center fielders with 17 defensive runs saved. Rafaela had 15. Crow-Armstrong had 12. No other center fielder in that group had more than six, which is why the conversation around defense has gravitated toward this trio even while they were arriving for a showcase built around star power.
Crow-Armstrong said he likes watching Rafaela and likes facing him, because the Red Sox center fielder gets a quick jump and closes on balls in a way very few players match. He pointed to Daulton Varsho as one possible exception on balls over the head, but the larger point was clear: Rafaela’s defense has earned respect from a direct peer, not just from scouts or stat lines.
That is what gives the exchange weight beyond the quote itself. All-Star Week in Philadelphia is usually packed with polite talk and easy compliments, but this one carried a little more edge because the praise was being measured against real production. Pages may have led the group in defensive runs saved through Sunday, yet Rafaela and Crow-Armstrong were still the names most tied to the conversation about center-field range, jumps and routes.
There is also a simple open question hanging over Tuesday night’s Midsummer Classic: how much will either of them actually play, and will they spend much of the game matching up against the very skills they just praised? For now, Rafaela has already gotten one kind of win in Philadelphia. He came in as the Red Sox center fielder. He leaves Monday with a fellow All-Star saying the kind of thing players remember.
