Pete Crow-Armstrong gave the Cubs a brief jolt on August 16, but it did not change the result. His two-run homer with two outs in the third cut the deficit to one, and the Cardinals still rolled to an 11-4 win in Game 125.
That is why the Nl Mvp Odds chatter around Chicago is louder today than it would have been after a normal loss. Crow-Armstrong’s swing was one of the few bright spots in a game the Cubs let slip away, and the weekend only made the picture darker: they dropped three of four by a combined 26-11, after managing only one win in that stretch, a 3-0 game that briefly interrupted the skid.
The first inning told the rest of the story. Alec Burleson put the Cardinals ahead with a two-run homer, and the Cubs spent the afternoon chasing. By the end, the club was 72-53, a record that still left it well into safe territory, but not close enough to ignore what the standings were saying. The Cubs had played six games with six different starters, and five of those starters struggled, which is the kind of stretch that turns one loss into a weeklong problem.
That is where the friction sits. Crow-Armstrong’s homer mattered in the box score and in the WPA-driven Heroes and Goats view of the game, where every play is measured by how much it moves the win probability. But a single swing can only do so much when the team gives back the lead and keeps stacking losses. The Cubs are still in position to matter, yet the path to catching The Brewers has become narrower, especially with The Brewers taking three of four from The Dodgers at the same time.
So the next step is less about one highlight than about whether the Cubs can stop turning bright moments into lost afternoons. Crow-Armstrong supplied the spark on August 16. The club now has to prove it can turn one swing into a game that actually changes something.
