Mark Grote

I think when you look at what he's been able to do as far as production, but also the hitter we're seeing right now is a lot different than the hitter we saw in the first half.

There is a...

concerted effort by pete crowe armstrong to have a plan each and every time he's at the plate and like i'm talking being able to lay off pitches out of the zone being able to work in it back being able to if you see a fastball early in the count ambushing guys like this is a different type of hitter and i think it's a guy that took the success from last season and took the failures from the second half the postseason and the first three four weeks of this year and said okay

This is what I'm good at.

This is what I'm not good at.

And what I'm going to try to do is to make an effort to make pitchers throw me the baseball in the strike zone.

And from that point on, like you're seeing a guy that's up the walk rate.

He's dropped the strikeout rate.

Like you're seeing a guy that's able to get on base enough to use the tools that make him special.

And that's why I agree with that statement that this is the best version of PCA we're seeing.

I mean, so here's the thing.

I saw people up in arms about that.

He's been great for over a month and a half now because of the start to the season.

I can see why he didn't get the initial push in the early voting.

I'm also very much of how much does it really matter?

You can't let that define a guy's first half.

We all know PCA is playing his butt off and been one of the best players in baseball over the last seven weeks.

But just because he's 14th in voting doesn't mean he hasn't been a damn good player.

And he still may find his way to the All-Star game.

A little punch card.