CHICAGO — He sent it 403 feet to right field, and the Cubs lost the game anyway.
Pete Crow-Armstrong hit his 40th home run of the season on September 6, pulling a Tyler Phillips sweeper down the right-field line with 111.2 mph of exit velocity. The milestone carried the weight of the number, not the afternoon’s score. Chicago fell to Miami. Crow-Armstrong walked into the clubhouse needing five stolen bases and 17 games to do what only six players in the history of professional baseball have done.
That is the axis on which September 2026 is turning: not just the wild-card standings, not just the usual October countdown, but three historical chases running simultaneously in what is shaping up as the most consequential final month in recent memory. Crow-Armstrong needs five stolen bases for a 40-40 season. Yordan Alvarez needs to hold leads in three statistical categories for 18 more games to become the first Triple Crown winner in 14 years, and the first man to lead both leagues simultaneously since Mickey Mantle in 1956. And somewhere in Los Angeles, Shohei Ohtani is trying to make it through a day without something else breaking down.
Three weeks. Three open questions. None of them are heading toward a clean answer.
The 40-40 club requires 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in the same season, a threshold so demanding that only Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Shohei Ohtani have ever crossed it. Crow-Armstrong has 40 homers. He has 35 stolen bases. He is 24 years old and is, as of this week, the front-runner for the National League MVP award.
He is also the first left-handed batter to reach 40 home runs for the Cubs since Hall of Famer Billy Williams did it in 1970, and the first player at age 24 or younger to post 40 homers and 35 steals since Acuña in 2023. Acuña won the MVP that year. That context is not lost on the voters, or on Crow-Armstrong’s teammates, who have watched a player who was a highly regarded prospect 18 months ago redefine what “highly regarded” actually means.
According to Yahoo Sports, Crow-Armstrong sent the ball a projected 403 feet with an exit velocity of 111.2 mph. He has two stolen bases in his last two games. The Chicago Cubs are in the second NL wild-card spot with five games of cushion. The situation should cooperate. Whether the rest does is baseball’s prerogative.
Alvarez’s situation is less mechanical. The Astros hold a wild-card spot, and Alvarez has been their best hitter all season, entering September batting .322 with 38 home runs and 95 RBIs, leading the American League in all three Triple Crown categories. But the threat is not in the holding; it is in the erosion. In August, Alvarez batted .242 over a 10-game stretch, allowing Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero to pull even in home runs at 38 and Baltimore’s Pete Alonso to close within striking distance of the RBI lead at 95. The leads are thin. Alvarez has the numbers. The question is whether he has three more weeks of the version of himself that built them.
No one who has attempted the Triple Crown since Miguel Cabrera in 2012 has managed it. Carl Yastrzemski won the last American League Triple Crown in 1967. The overall Triple Crown (leading both leagues simultaneously in all three categories) has not been done since Mantle. Fox Sports called Alvarez’s bid “one of the most compelling individual pursuits in the sport in a generation.” That reads as marketing. It is also accurate.
His left knee ended his pitching season in early July, a shutdown the Dodgers acknowledged reluctantly and long after the reality was apparent. Since then, a right biceps issue has come and gone. Now a neck and hip have kept him out of four consecutive games in the first week of September. Manager Dave Roberts said the situation was “day-to-day” and, when pressed on whether Ohtani would avoid the injured list, added: “Hopeful. I wouldn’t say confident, but hopeful.”
The classification problem sharpens the difficulty. Because Ohtani holds two-way player status, the Dodgers can only place him on the 15-day injured list rather than the 10-day. That changes the arithmetic. Los Angeles has the best record in the NL West. They are going to the postseason. The question is not whether they get there; it is whether they arrive with a version of Ohtani capable of contributing when they do.
Ohtani went 0 for 4 with four strikeouts against the Cardinals on September 2 and was visibly wincing after his final at-bat. He has not hit a home run since August 18, and entered the week in a 6-for-42 slump spanning 11 games. Three weeks ago, he was the favorite to win the National League MVP. That race now belongs to Crow-Armstrong, who has not paused long enough to acknowledge it.
The playoff picture entering September 9 shows the American League largely settled: Tampa Bay, the White Sox, and the Astros hold division leads, with the New York Yankees, Red Sox, and Guardians in wild-card spots. The Guardians and White Sox are separated by a game in the AL Central, the one division where position still matters. In the National League, Milwaukee has the best record in baseball and is playing for seeding. Six teams (San Diego, Arizona, Miami, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati) are within six games of the third and final wild-card spot. That is a genuine race for a single playoff position.
The Dodgers’ brief slide down the MLB power rankings earlier this season registered as a curiosity. Now, with Ohtani diminished and the division won on paper, Los Angeles enters October needing its rotation to carry what the lineup may not be able to.
The regular season ends September 27. The postseason begins September 29.
Crow-Armstrong knows what he needs. Alvarez knows what he is carrying. Ohtani knows what his body is telling him. What none of them know, and what no one knows, is whether the best version of each of them shows up for the final 18 games. September does not offer previews. It just keeps score.
