Pete Crow-Armstrong’s 40-40 Season, Shower Math & a $5K IOU

Good morning! If you’re just tuning into my blog after a while, you may have noticed the Halloween-themed October surprise. On a computer rather than a mobile device, you’ll even hear Halloween sounds and see Halloweenish things float across the screen. Kind of fun, and only slightly haunted. (Want more spooky season? The Halloween vault is open.) On today’s menu: the midterms, Tom Cruise’s shower math, unfit SEALs, Pete Crow-Armstrong’s historic 40-40 season, and a running tally of checks I’m still waiting on. But first, as always, how about some music.

I’m always trying to broaden my musical horizons and not get stuck replaying the same ten songs on a loop. Case in point: Dwayne Gretzky, a Toronto band that has built a loyal following doing nothing but covers, taking on Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Yes, the boombox-over-the-head song from Say Anything. Forty years later it still holds up. And no, I will not be standing outside anyone’s window with a speaker to prove it.

Midterms

Karl Rove and David Axelrod sat down with PBS NewsHour to talk midterms, and Rove made some headlines. I’ll give him credit here. He refuses to vote for a bigot, so he’s voting for the second Democrat of his entire life, in the Texas Railroad Commission race. The Republican nominee posted a photo of University of Texas students and called some of them “the problem” based on their ethnicity. Rove’s summary: “If you’re not from a white Christian country, he wants you out.” (Fun fact: the Texas Railroad Commission regulates oil and gas, not railroads. Texas gonna Texas.)

Both men agree the House is most likely gone for Republicans. Axelrod pegged it at roughly a 15-seat Democratic majority, and Rove agreed Democrats gain more than 10 seats. The Senate, where Republicans hold a three- or four-seat cushion, is more of a coin toss. None of that is unusual. Rarely does one party hold the majority for long. Since the Civil War, the president’s party has gained House seats in a midterm only three times: 1934, 1998 and 2002. Midterms are basically America’s customer satisfaction survey, and the customer is rarely satisfied.

What is unusual is how far underwater the President is. A Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll from late September had his approval at 33%, a new low for that poll, with Democrats up 10 on the generic ballot among likely voters. With independents, his net approval was −49. Negative forty-nine. That’s not a polling number, that’s a Chicago windchill in January.

Tom Cruise on Graham Norton

Tom Cruise and Florence Pugh stopped by The Graham Norton Show (the BBC’s big Friday night talk show) to promote Digger, his new movie that opened October 2. In between the movie talk, Graham asked a trivia question: how many showers does the average Brit take in a year? Tom guessed 340, then dropped his answer to 140 once he learned baths didn’t count. Florence’s response was perfect: “So, are you not showering every day?” A man who hangs off the side of airplanes for a living just got taken down by a bathroom question. I’ll let the clip speak for itself, but the number was rather surprising.

SEALs Not Fit

Not sure how many of you know this, but I’m a fan of Jocko Willink: retired Navy SEAL, co-author of Extreme Ownership, and the guy who posts a photo of his watch at 4:30 a.m. like it’s a threat. I’m a big user of his Jocko Fuel products and supplements, and his creatine is so good. But I found this segment, “No Fat SEALs,” where he talks about SEALs who weren’t fit enough to pass their physical fitness tests. Good segment.

For context, the Navy got serious about this in January. According to Navy Times, SEALs now take a combat fitness assessment on top of the regular test: an 800-meter swim, max push-ups and pull-ups in a 20-pound weighted vest, and a one-mile run carrying that same 20 pounds. To score “outstanding,” a younger SEAL needs to swim the 800 in under 11:20, crank out 54 push-ups and 21 pull-ups, and run the mile in eight minutes or less. Fail three fitness assessments in four years and you’re looking at separation. For the record, I can also do 21 pull-ups. Over the course of a week.

My Cubs: Pete Crow-Armstrong’s 40-40 Season and a Wild Card Faceplant

PCA’s 2026 by the numbers: 45 HR · 41 SB · .942 OPS · 107 RBI · 10.6 WAR · the seventh 40-40 season in MLB history

To say it was disappointing is an understatement. But I take the good with the bad this season. It started phenomenally. By May 8 the Cubs were 27-12, ahead of the Brewers and tied for the best record in baseball, thanks to two separate double-digit winning streaks. That made them only the second team in franchise history with two 10-game win streaks in one season. Then, true to form, they ripped off a 10-game losing streak in late May. That made them just the 12th team ever with both a 10-game winning streak and a 10-game losing streak in the same season, and nobody had ever gone from one to the other faster. Being a Cubs fan is basically owning a mood ring with a payroll. (I’ve been here before.)

Then the starters started getting hurt. Cade Horton went down with forearm trouble in April and was lost for the season, and Matthew Boyd, Jameson Taillon and Edward Cabrera all spent time on the injured list. The bullpen started to show its issues, too. By late September, Cubs pitchers ranked dead last in baseball in pitcher WAR, behind even the Rockies, per CBS Sports. That’s wild, because the rest of the team was elite. The Cubs led MLB in runs and slugging, and their defense posted 72 Outs Above Average, miles ahead of the next-best Diamondbacks at 44. They finished 89-73, second in the NL Central and 14 games behind a Brewers team that won 103. Then the Padres swept them out of the Wild Card round, 8-0 and 4-1. Twelve runs to one. I’ve had more fun at the DMV.

Despite it all, they were a fun team to watch, and Pete Crow-Armstrong was the main reason. PCA finished with 45 home runs, 41 stolen bases, 107 RBIs, 119 runs and a .280/.372/.570 slash line. He stole his 40th base on September 24 at Wrigley, giving baseball just its seventh 40-40 season ever. The rest of that club: Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Shohei Ohtani. Not bad company for a kid most people thought was a glove-first center fielder.

Speaking of the glove, he also led all of baseball with 25 Outs Above Average in center field. FanGraphs has him at 10.6 WAR. This century, only Bonds and Aaron Judge have topped that, and in Cubs history only Rogers Hornsby’s 1929 season beats it. He should be an almost automatic NL MVP. The playoffs were another story: he went 0-for-7 with four strikeouts against San Diego, and to his credit he owned it, saying “it is clear to see that I didn’t contribute.” Postseason PCA, we’ll see you next October.

Dear Pete: Wrigley Is Not a Cracker Box

My golf buddy Pete made the assertion on his blog that PCA is basically a product of his ballpark. His exact words: “hitting in a cracker box, is DIFFERENT than in a regular sized stadium….da Cubbies Pete Crow…is a terrific hitter…But a normal guy here…Judge, Ohtani, the 2 Phillies, and others…are all better than him.” Hey, we live in the era of hot takes. So let’s check the tape, Pete.

Yes, Wrigley helped: he hit 27 homers at home and 18 on the road. But Wrigley isn’t exactly a Little League field. It’s 355 feet down the left-field line, 400 to center and 353 to right, and when the wind blows in off Lake Michigan it plays like the Grand Canyon. Even if you throw out every home game, 18 road homers in 81 games is a 36-homer pace over a full season. Plenty of sluggers would sign up for that.

Here’s where the hot take really falls apart. PCA homered in 13 different road ballparks this year, and at least eight of his 18 road homers came in some of the stingiest home run parks in baseball: Petco Park, Oracle Park, T-Mobile Park, Busch Stadium and loanDepot park. His 40th homer, in Miami, left the bat at 111.2 mph and traveled 403 feet, per MLB.com. In Seattle, where fly balls go to die, he went deep on back-to-back days in August.

And then there’s Petco Park, Pete’s “regular sized stadium,” where the marine layer eats fly balls for breakfast. That’s where PCA’s whole season turned around. He rolled into San Diego in late April with one home run and a .613 OPS. On Tuesday, April 28, he hit a three-run homer to snap a 77-plate-appearance homerless drought. The next afternoon, Wednesday, April 29, he did it again with a two-run shot off Matt Waldron in a 5-4 Cubs win. Back-to-back days, in one of the toughest places to hit a home run in the National League. He was a different hitter from that series on. Pete, that’s your “normal guy here.”

As for Judge, Ohtani and “the 2 Phillies” (I’m guessing Schwarber and Harper) all being better? The final 2026 numbers say otherwise. PCA tied Kyle Schwarber for the MLB home run lead at 45, so nobody on Pete’s list hit more. He led the National League with a .942 OPS. And he finished with 10.6 FanGraphs WAR, a full 3.8 wins ahead of anybody else in baseball. Yordan Alvarez and Bobby Witt Jr. tied for second at 6.8, which means Judge, Ohtani, Schwarber and Harper all finished at least 3.8 wins behind him.

According to MLB.com, that’s the biggest gap between No. 1 and No. 2 in 70 years, since Mickey Mantle in 1956. And if we’re docking guys for their home parks, Judge gets to aim at a 314-foot right-field porch in Yankee Stadium, and the Phillies play in Citizens Bank Park, one of the friendliest home run parks in baseball. Cracker boxes for everybody!

The underlying numbers back it up, too. Statcast checks every one of his batted balls against all 30 ballparks. On average he’d have hit about 42, and as many as 51 in the most homer-friendly park. That’s not a park-made hitter. He posted a 75.1 mph average bat speed, a 48.6% hard-hit rate and a max exit velocity of 114.6 mph. Do I think PCA is a long-term 45-homer guy? No. But he’s young, he has bat speed right now, and that leg kick generates a ton of power. That makes him deadly. Cracker boxes don’t hit 114 mph lasers. Bat speed does. Love you, Pete. See you on the first tee.

Lastly: The $5,000 Check Is in the Mail (It’s Not)

Our President has now decided to offer each adult $5,000 if Republicans win both the House and the Senate. He pitched it at the RNC’s midterm convention in Dallas, and he says tariff money will help pay for it. That’s the comical bit. With roughly 245 million adults, $5,000 apiece comes to over $1.2 trillion. The government has collected just under $500 billion in tariff and excise revenue since the start of last year, and more than $100 billion of that was refunded after the Supreme Court struck down many of the tariffs. The math doesn’t math. That’s like offering to buy the whole bar a round when you’ve got a twenty and a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon.

And remember the fine print: you only get it if Republicans win both chambers. That’s not a dividend. That’s a raffle ticket where he picks the winning numbers and the drawing is November 3rd.

Here’s the part that really gets me: that tariff money came out of our pockets in the first place. The Yale Budget Lab estimates tariffs cost the typical household more than $1,000 a year. Here’s what that looks like at the store:

Coffee: Harvard’s Pricing Lab, which tracks millions of online retail prices, found tariffs pushed coffee up 10.3% in 2025. Then it went up another 6.1% over the past year, per the USDA. My morning cup now has a cover charge.
Furniture and rugs: Furniture rose 7% and carpets and rugs jumped 41.5% after the tariffs hit, according to the same Harvard tracking. That new couch now costs more than the room it’s sitting in.
Clothing and shoes: The Minneapolis Fed found clothing and footwear inflation went from 0.3% last December to 3.5% by July. The Fed’s headline: the pass-through of tariffs to consumer prices “has arrived.” Apparel was up 3.6% in the August CPI, well above overall core inflation.
Groceries: Beef is up 5.9% and sugar and sweets are up 6.1% over the past year, per the USDA. Not all of that is tariffs, but none of it is a $5,000 check either.
Everything imported: In 2025, imported goods rose about 6.2% above their pre-tariff trend, and American-made goods rose 3.6%, because domestic companies raised prices too. When your competitor’s price goes up, why not yours?

And it hits hardest the people who can least afford it. Harvard’s researchers found that the cheaper, budget versions of products went up faster than the premium ones. The Minneapolis Fed estimates tariffs are now adding 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points to core inflation. So the plan is to tax you through higher prices, then mail some of it back with his name on it. Americans voted for him with affordability as one of their top issues. It seems he’s clueless on how to fix that.

Just so everyone’s keeping score, here’s my running tally of things I’ve been promised:

Mexico paying for the wall: $0
The DOGE dividend (remember all the government savings we were all getting a cut of?): $0
The $2,000 tariff rebate check: $0
The health care money he’d send “directly to the people” instead of the insurance companies: $0
The health care plan coming “in two weeks”: week 400 and counting
Infrastructure Week: still buffering
The $5,000 “if Republicans win” check: TBD (spoiler: $0)

People. Stop falling for it. It’s all talk. It’s all lies.

At this point the list of checks I’m owed is longer than the Cubs’ injured list, and my mailbox has more IOUs from this White House than my golf buddies have excuses for their slice. Don’t take my word for it, though. Here he is in his own words, looking forward to “signing those checks.” He loves signing checks. Covering them is a different department. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2026 Midterm Elections, I’m going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America, $5,000! Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I look forward to signing those checks! pic.twitter.com/YOkESiUBrc
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 3, 2026

Sources

Midterms

Tom Cruise on Graham Norton

Yardbarker: Florence Pugh grills Tom Cruise over his shower claims

SEALs Not Fit

Navy Times: Navy introduces combat fitness test for SEALs, fleet divers, others

Cubs and Pete Crow-Armstrong

Tariffs and the $5,000 check

Big Waste of Time

Tom Cruise’s Shower Math, Pete Crow-Armstrong’s 40-40, and Another $5,000 IOU

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