Jed Hoyer, Cubs pleased with what they've seen from Pete Crow-Armstrong despite his demotion to Triple-A

(670 The Score) While they’ve demoted 22-year-old outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong to Triple-A Iowa, the Cubs are nonetheless pleased with his progress.

President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer on Tuesday praised Crow-Armstrong’s development while explaining the thought process behind optioned him back to the minor leagues.

Crow-Armstrong is hitting .236 with one homer, nine RBIs, five stolen bases and a .659 OPS in 23 games for the Cubs this season. That came after Crow-Armstrong went hitless in 14 at-bats in a brief call-up to the Cubs late in the 2023 season.

“I thought it was really positive,” Hoyer said of Crow-Armstrong’s stint with the Cubs for the past month. “First of all, I thought on the defensive side, he’s going to be a Gold Glove-quality center fielder. I think you can already rank him among the top center fielders. You see how easy he makes hard plays look. These plays are 85%, 90% hit probabilities and he makes the play chest-high or head-high. It makes it look pretty simple. So that’s a lot of fun to watch. I thought his decision-making in general was better. I think that offensively, I think at this point, he needs to play every day and be down there and get at-bats. But I thought compared to last year, his ability to battle against major league pitching was much better. He did make better decisions at the plate. I think there was a lot of real positive signs. I thought this stint looked nothing like last year, which is fantastic. I thought he looked like someone that has a chance to help us for a long time.”