TITLE: Crow-Armstrong Powers Cubs Past Reds Again, 17-5, as Cincinnati's Early Struggles Continue
Crow-Armstrong Powers Cubs Past Reds Again, 17-5, as Cincinnati's Early Struggles Continue
The Chicago Cubs blew the doors off the Reds on Saturday, taking the second meeting between these two clubs this season by a 17-5 final that wasn't nearly as close as the final score might suggest to anyone just glancing at a box score.
Pete Crow-Armstrong was the story from the first pitch to the last. The center fielder put together a monster afternoon, racking up 100.0 fantasy points and single-handedly outproducing Cincinnati's entire lineup. Whatever Crow-Armstrong is seeing at the plate right now, the Reds don't have an answer for it. He was the difference-maker in a game full of them for Chicago.
This one is part of an up-and-down stretch for the Cubs, who opened the season with an 8-10 loss to this same Reds club before flipping the script Saturday with a 17-5 rout. Sandwiched in between were a pair of tight losses to Arizona — one by a single run, one by two — so this offense has shown it can go quiet. It did not go quiet against Cincinnati.
Behind Crow-Armstrong, the Cubs got production up and down the order. Carson Kelly turned in a huge day behind the plate, posting 57.0 fantasy points, while Alex Bregman continued to look comfortable in the middle of Chicago's lineup with 51.0 points of his own. Seiya Suzuki chipped in 50.0 points, giving the Cubs four hitters north of the 50-point threshold in a single game — the kind of across-the-board offensive explosion that turns a competitive game into a laugher by the fourth or fifth inning. Tyrone Taylor added 33.5 points and Pedro Ramirez kicked in 26.5 more, meaning essentially every regular in Chicago's order made an impact.
On the mound, Kevin Gausman got the ball for the Cubs and did his job, finishing with 19.0 fantasy points, while Colin Rea worked in relief and added 14.0 points. With this much run support, the pitching staff had plenty of cushion to work with all afternoon.
For Cincinnati, this was a lopsided result to open a young season. Sal Stewart led Cincinnati's offense with 35.0 fantasy points, and Eugenio Suárez added 33.0, but beyond that duo the Reds simply couldn't generate anything resembling sustained pressure on Chicago's pitching. Elly De La Cruz managed 22.5 points, still productive, but nowhere near enough to keep pace with what the Cubs were doing on the other side.
Tyler Stephenson and TJ Friedl rounded out the notable Cincinnati performances with 10.5 and 9.5 points respectively, modest numbers that reflect just how one-sided this game was from top to bottom. When your fifth-best performer barely cracks double digits and the opponent's center fielder alone triples that total, there isn't much argument to be made about how the game actually played out.
It's still Week 1, and both of these clubs have plenty of season left to sort out who they are. But the early sample suggests two different trajectories. The Cubs look like a team capable of scoring in bunches when their lineup clicks, and Crow-Armstrong looks like the engine that makes it go. Cincinnati, meanwhile, has now been on the wrong end of a lopsided loss to the same opponent that split the earlier meeting with them, and will need to find some answers on the mound and at the plate before this season gets away from them.
For fantasy managers building lineups on JockBroker, Crow-Armstrong's afternoon is the kind of performance that reshapes a roster's outlook for the week. When a single player nearly matches an entire opposing lineup's fantasy output, that's a name worth building around.
