Crow-Armstrong Goes Nuclear: 3 HR, 6 RBI in Cubs' 17-5 Demolition

Pete Crow-Armstrong hit three home runs and drove in six on Saturday, turning a competitive early game into a laugher. The Cubs beat Cincinnati 17-5, with four different Chicago hitters going deep in one of the more complete offensive performances you'll see all season.

The Cubs wasted no time. Crow-Armstrong led off the scoring with a 435-foot shot to right center in the first, and Bregman followed with a 416-foot two-run blast to center to make it 3-0 before Cincinnati had even blinked. The Reds punched back hard in the second — Eugenio Suárez's 413-foot two-run homer to center swung Chicago's win probability from 86% to 76%, the biggest single-play shift of the night, and suddenly this looked like a real game. It didn't stay that way. A throwing error by shortstop De La Cruz allowed a run to score, and then Crow-Armstrong went back to work with a 375-foot shot to right that pushed the lead to 6-2. Cincinnati got within two on Sal Stewart's 431-foot homer to left center in the third, and a Bleday sacrifice fly in the fifth briefly made it a 7-5 game. That was as close as the Reds would get.

Carson Kelly ended any suspense in the fifth with a three-run homer to left — 371 feet, Taylor and Ramirez both scoring — to push it to 10-5. From there, the Cubs methodically buried Cincinnati. Crow-Armstrong's third home run, a 444-foot shot to center in the seventh with two runners on, made it 13-5 and put the game firmly in the rearview. A Hoerner single, a Kelly double, and a Suzuki homer to left in the eighth — 406 feet, two runs — closed the scoring at 17-5. Seiya Suzuki finished 3-for-5 with a homer and 2 RBI. Bregman went 3-for-5 with a homer and 3 RBI. This was a full-roster offensive assault.

The story of the night was obviously Crow-Armstrong — 4-for-6, three home runs, six RBI, four runs scored is a line that looks made up, and yet here we are. Kevin Gausman's start was a mixed bag: 5.0 innings, 5 earned runs, 7 strikeouts, which on most nights would be a problem. The offense made it irrelevant before he even left the mound. Colin Rea and Ryan Zeferjahn combined for 3.1 scoreless innings behind him, keeping the margin clean. Cincinnati's Sam Moll tossed a clean inning of relief, but the Reds' pitching staff as a whole appears to have had no answer for a Chicago lineup that was locked in from the first pitch. When four different hitters go deep and your center fielder hits the ball 435, 375, and 444 feet in the same game, the final score tends to look like this one.