Imagining a world where the Reds had drafted Pete Crow-Armstrong

While he is only playing in his third MLB season, Pete Crow-Armstrong is quickly becoming one of the biggest thorns in the side of the Cincinnati Reds. Not only is he young, brash, and very good at playing baseball, but he is doing so while playing for a hated division rival in the Cubs. However, there was a world where he could have been playing for the Reds instead.

The Cubs, obviously, didn't draft Crow-Armstrong back in 2020. That honor went to the Mets with the #19 overall pick before they shipped PCA to Chicago in the Javy Baez trade. Curiously, Cincinnati picked at #12 that year, and one cannot help but wonder what things would have looked like had the Reds picked Crow-Armstrong that year instead of draft bust Austin Hendrick.

Imagining Pete Crow-Armstrong in a Reds uniform wasn't as farfetched as you think at one point

Crow-Armstrong was considered one of the better draft prospects in 2020, but being a high school bat committed to Vanderbilt allowed him to fall to the back half of the first round. Meanwhile, Cincinnati decided to take a different high school outfielder with the 12th pick in the draft. Hendrick is finally hitting a bit down in the minors, but it has taken five years, and it is still hard to get excited about a .799 OPS with a ton of swing and miss from a 24-year-old in Double-A.

Had the Reds instead picked PCA, the Mets may have never been able to acquire Baez. Given how Baez's career went in the years after that, this is debatably good or bad. More importantly, the Cubs would probably be in deep trouble this season without him. The names still on the draft board in this scenario, including Hendrick, are not exciting whatsoever unless you think the Cubs were fated to get Owen Caissie regardless, and they reached to pick him at 19 instead of dropping into the second round like he did.

Meanwhile, the Reds' outfield would be in tremendous shape on both sides of the ball, and their lineup would have arguably the most swagger in all of baseball with PCA and Elly De La Cruz. Some may wonder if Cincinnati would have traded Crow-Armstrong away like the Mets did, but the Reds don't really trade prospects even when they probably should cut them loose.

Unfortunately, the Reds did pass on Crow-Armstrong and just have to deal with missing on Hendrick in a big way. While Crow-Armstrong is far from a perfect player, it does look like he is going to do some damage for the foreseeable future, and Cincinnati has to live on knowing they could have prevented the Cubs from getting their grubby little hands on him.

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