Best of the Cubs: Top storylines to follow in 2026 season
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What are the top storylines for the Cubs in the 2026 season?
Mahaney, Harris, and Grody. Could you imagine Lovie Smith doing the whole good, better, best thing and saying bleep the Packers? Come on, guys. Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Never let it rest. I'll see you on Tuesday. Middays 10 to 2 on 104.3 The Score. The 2-2. You know the voice. Get familiar if you forgot. That's Pat Hughes right here on 104.3 The Score. And this is Rahimi Harrison-Grody. Russell Dorsey and alongside Marshall Harris here on this President's Day, getting you through the next four hours. And Cade Horton's strikeouts, I remember that from the regular season. Postseason, not so much. And Russell Dorsey has been so kind to lend us his baseball expertise. He the... Yahoo, National Insider, talking all things MLB.
And Russ came to me and said, hey, I got something I want to talk about. And he didn't bring his chef's hat with him because if he had it, I'd say put the chef's hat on. It's time for him to cook. I am simply the sous chef. Russ is going to run the joint for the next two segments because he has the storylines that are cooking for the Cubs and the White Sox. This segment, we will talk Cubs. Russ, you think there's three big things that we should all be paying attention to down in Mesa? Yeah. So we get in this time of year, we talk about this a little bit in transition, you get past Valentine's Day. Oh, man, it's about that time. It's warming up here in the city and you're just getting that itch for some for some baseball.
That's where that's where I'm at. And so when I'm thinking about the Cubs and the White Sox and right now we're going to start with the Cubs. Number one storyline going into 2026 for me. Which version of Pete Crow Armstrong will we see? We saw the all-star MVP caliber first half from Pete Crow Armstrong. First half had an 847 OPS, 25 homers. You saw a guy, Marshall Harris, that was taking baseball by storm. He was cool, started the season with the blue hair, making plays all around the yard at Wrigley Field. Top two defensive center fielder in the game of baseball, him and Sadon Rafaela in Boston are both amazing. Won a gold glove last year, deservedly so. And you saw a guy where you're like, man, this is the type of dude you build around.
And then the second half got there. And you did not see the same Pete Crow Armstrong. OPS 634 with six homers. And. A very young player still. Overall, a very solid season. Over 90 runs scored, over 90 RBIs, had over 30 home runs. The amazing defense in center field. That's a very, very high quality season from Pete Gromsong, even though where the Cubs were, the second half wasn't great. That carried over into the postseason for Pete as well. My eye is on which version of Pete do you get in 26? Because if you can get, we'll call it... Sixty five percent, even 70 percent of the first half, Pete Armstrong offensively with that same high quality defense that we saw from him since he's gotten to the big leagues, to be honest.
Then you still have a high quality player. So you want, let's say, a two-thirds version of the first half of PCA for the entirety of the season. I think that's fair. The consistency level. So if I'm doing the math correctly, at that rate, he would be a guy who hits, let's say, 30 home runs. And he would be a guy who steals, let's say, 40 bags. And maybe the peripherals are higher. Maybe an on-base percentage over 300? Because his on-base was below 300. Yes. And we talked about it a lot last year. And the slug was 481. So maybe this is what we're thinking. A guy who hits 30 home runs, steals 40 bases, a batting average above 250... an on-base above 300, a slug of, I'm going to say, 475, and an OPS above 800.
Is that a formula that works for you? I think that's fair. What I have written down is... Because I think swing and misses is going to be part of his game. And I know that's an area that he's working hard to improve. What I have written down is 250 to 270 batting average. 315 to 330 on base. That might be a little high, but keep going. I'm just saying that's your target. That's what you would hope for.
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