The last two weeks of the regular season have two individual chases worth following, and they pull in opposite directions. One man is sprinting toward history. The other is trying to outrun it.
Pete Crow-Armstrong and the 40-40 club
The Cubs center fielder has 41 home runs with 12 games left. He hit his 40th on Sept. 6 against Miami.
The stolen base side is where it gets tight. Sports Illustrated’s milestone roundup has him needing four steals to reach 40, though other outlets have him closer. He has four steals in 12 September games, so at his current pace he finishes with exactly 40 and no margin.
A 40-40 season would make him the seventh player in MLB history to do it, joining Jose Canseco in 1988, Barry Bonds in 1996, Alex Rodriguez in 1998, Alfonso Soriano in 2006, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Shohei Ohtani.
Seven players. In the entire history of the sport.
Crow-Armstrong is also the NL MVP frontrunner, having pulled away during a monster August while Ohtani sat on the injured list. A 40-40 finish would remove any remaining argument.
Kyle Schwarber and the record nobody wants
Schwarber leads all of baseball with 44 home runs. He has also struck out 210 times in 144 games.
The single-season record is 223, set by Mark Reynolds in 2009. Schwarber must strike out fewer than 13 times in his final 12 games to avoid it, which means he needs to average roughly one per game for two weeks.
He has never done that for a two-week stretch in his life.
Here is the thing, though: the strikeouts are the cost of the production, and the production has been historic. Schwarber is hitting .243 with a .358 on-base percentage and a .530 slugging mark, good for a 136 wRC+ across 618 plate appearances with 87 RBI and 86 runs.
On Sept. 6 he hit a go-ahead eighth-inning homer in a 1-0 win over Atlanta, backing a Jesus Luzardo two-hit shutout with 12 strikeouts. Per Sarah Langs and Elias, it was the fifth time Schwarber has homered in a game that ended 1-0, tying Ted Williams for the most all-time.
That homer was also his 230th as a Phillie, the second-most in MLB history by a player in his first five seasons with a club. Only Babe Ruth’s 235 with the Yankees is higher. It broke Ryan Howard’s franchise record for most homers in any five-year span.
The stakes are not just personal
Both teams are fighting for NL wild card seeding. The Cubs are 84-67, the Phillies 83-67. Every plate appearance in both chases is happening in a game that matters.
Other milestones still live: Francisco Lindor sits at 299 career home runs and would become the first player ever with 300 homers, 200 steals and 1,500 games at shortstop. Jose Ramirez is at 296 homers and three RBI shy of 1,000. Kenley Jansen has 495 saves, third all-time. CJ Abrams is one steal from 30-30.
Two weeks left, and a lot of numbers still moving.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.