Debate Watch: Why Pete Crow-Armstrong Could Be the 2026 NL MVP, Not Shohei Ohtani

The National League MVP race is still months away, but writers are already mapping the case. In a recent FOX Sports piece, Danny Parkins argued that Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Chicago Cubs center fielder, should be the 2026 NL MVP, rather than letting the discussion be dominated by Shohei Ohtani’s Dodgers run.

Central to the conversation is how the league frames its top individual prize. The FOX Sports column notes that the National League MVP Award has been renamed the "Shohei Ohtani Award." The wording is intentionally tongue-in-cheek in the column, but the point matters for MLB’s story line: when Ohtani is in peak form, his presence can crowd out other MVP candidates, even in seasons when the voters might want to look elsewhere.

Ohtani’s résumé in this framing is straightforward. The FOX Sports preview says he has won unanimous NL MVP honors in each of his first two seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, cited as 2024 and 2025, and described as his third and fourth MVP awards overall. If that degree of dominance becomes the default reference point, MVP debates tend to become less about ballot math and more about narrative fitting, which is where the Crow-Armstrong case tries to take control.

Parkins’ argument, as described by FOX Sports, is essentially a match-up of value and visibility. Crow-Armstrong is presented as the Cubs player who most clearly checks the boxes voters typically reward: a steady, everyday presence and the kind of two-way impact that can shape how a team plays on both ends of the field. In that framework, the debate turns on who is most responsible for “most valuable” production to his team over the long haul, not merely who is most famous during the highlight reel weeks.

The column’s design also suggests a broader change in how fans might interpret MVP candidacy. If the league has branded its NL MVP around a single superstar, then voters may have an additional tension to handle: awarding the award’s namesake, or awarding the most complete candidate in the NL that season. Crow-Armstrong’s pitch, as summarized in the FOX Sports preview, leans toward the second interpretation, making him a counterweight to the gravitational pull of Ohtani’s current mythology in the award landscape.

For the Cubs, that kind of MVP conversation matters even before any ballots are cast. It changes how a team’s season arc can be read, especially in center field, where range, reads, and the ability to turn batted balls into outs tend to influence both confidence in the outfield and the pitching staff’s risk tolerance. Even if the MVP debate is not a formal team-building priority, it can affect how observers evaluate the Cubs’ identity game after game.

What to watch next is not just whether Crow-Armstrong posts a strong season, but whether the Cubs sustain the kind of overall performance that makes a center fielder’s MVP case feel unavoidable. With Ohtani’s name tied to the award in this FOX Sports framing, 2026 could produce a clear split between “winner-by-brand” and “winner-by-impact,” and the Cubs may try to force the voters into the latter camp.