Mark Grote

That's a term that I use a lot with you guys.

Like that was something and still something I'm afraid of that can happen when guys start to reach that that tier of innings that they haven't pitched that in a while.

I want to go back to PCA.

You brought him up, touched on him a little bit, because last night I heard the broadcasters last night.

I guess it was Alex Cohen was doing the play-by-play with Jim Deshaies, and both sort of agreed, wholly agreed, that this is the best baseball that PCA, Pete Crow Armstrong, has played in a Cubs uniform ever.

And that obviously would include what he was doing in the first half of the season last year.

Do you agree with that notion?

Are we right now seeing, after the bad start he had, the best version of Pete Carr Armstrong yet?

I think so.

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.