Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Craig Counsell talks balancing adjustments, preserving the special for Pete Crow-Armstrong

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Leila Rahimi, Marshall Harris and Mark Grote listened and reacted to Cubs manager Craig Counsell's recent comments on center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Rahimi Harris and Grody, midday's tidal tune on Chicago Sports Radio. 104.3, the score. That is thanks to 104 through the score. This is Rahimi Harris and Grody. We're still not used to saying that yet, and we have a game coming up. Today is your first chance to listen to Cubs baseball and crystal clear FM quality with the Cubs opening spring training against the White Sox in Mesa. Cubs and socks to start to start spring training.

Coverage begins at 155. I'm smiling so much, I can't talk. Pekker Armstrong is not in the Cubs lineup today, at least not to start. But Craig Counsel was on with our afternoon show and talked with Spiegel and Holmes about trying to balance the excitement of PCA with the excitement of PCA. That's what every player goes through. That's part of it, right? I think the word is improvement, right?

It doesn't have to, I think sometimes we think we want these, like, go from zero to 60 here on some things. And I think improvement on what he'd accomplished last year, that's really how this thing works. You're just always improving. And I think that's his mindset. I think spring training is a time to, you know, you have some thoughts. You have things you work on in the winter. You have goals on things that you want to improve on. and you kind of you test those things out, where does it have me, where does it take me?

And then as you get closer, you kind of hone that in as to what you're going to take into the season in terms of some adjustments you made. And over the long haul, that stuff should add to improvement. You're going to miss on some things. You're going to hit on some things. But over the long haul, that's improvement. And at Pete's age, I think we all know that athletes at Pete's age, that's what they go through. I think it is as simple as trying to harness that excitement.

into just a little bit more plate discipline. You want the refined plate discipline. There's a lot of energy there. There's a lot of potential there. There's a lot of everything there. Can you get it all just into every pitch that you see and just contain it in like a nuclear, like a nuke? Like you know what the nuke just explode and go everywhere because then people die. But if you can harness the nuclear energy, it can power a whole city.

So you want a laser. basically. Yes, a laser from nuclear power that is PCA. A laser? I think all the right things are being talked about as it pertains to Pete Kramer Aramstrung right now. Very good. Layla's doing the dance right now.

I think the idea of, as it was it Sahada Sharma who wrote the article in the athletic, he's got to get smaller, all of that kind of stuff. The problem I see here with PCA is that once you get a taste of hitting the ball out the park, you know, like to a point where you're thinking, man, I might be able to hit 40 home runs this season. You might sound like he's addicted. You also made his intermodelag sound like Hawk Harrelson. I guess I'm all over the place.

I might just hit 40 home runs. Let me tell you about Hawk Harrison. I do like to talk about Hawk, and I have had addiction issues. So it all makes sense what you guys are saying about me right now. But I think once you've had that taste of hitting the ball over the wall, do you really want to go back to being a disciplined, get smaller hitter? And I'm sure that PCA will talk about that. I'm sure that he will try to do that.

But wouldn't you, especially his age, 23, 24, whatever he is in the back of his mind, man, he has had a taste of hitting home runs. How do you overcome that and then become what, an 11 home run guy who gets on base a ton? When you hit 45 doubles? You think that's going to satiate? I don't think it would. I don't think it's going to stay. Yeah, so that's what I worry about.

We are in that period of time with baseball for both of our teams where everything is great. Everything's about getting better and guys that were bad. bad last year, had slumps. Here's what they're doing to get better. And then it could all come unraveled again once the real stuff starts. I think the shame of knowing that the strikeouts looked so bad with the timing. You know, and he was swinging at balls that were so low, for example, or just... But he would hit those, too, at times. Yes, but I think that's the real problem here is you can't let the ball out of the strike zone be the thing that you search for. because when that happens, that's when this all falls apart.

Like the stats tell the tale. I mentioned this the other day. Last two months of the season, he only had a 45 weighted runs created plus. That is ridiculous. And if you pair that with the third highest chase rate in major league baseball, you can experience the joy of the home run enough, but the agony of defeat is coming at you pretty well. Which one's stronger?

the high of a homer or the downer of chase rate? Is it the love of the bears, the hate of the taxes? Well, the last two, you know, the last baseball they had after the All-Star break, his OPS was just a 634. So that tells you what the problem is, is when you're chasing too much for that, you're not making any quality contact. Your eye is off, you're not hunting fastball. Like, tell me your fastball approach every day.

And I will show you that. And if that answer makes sense, we'll see a better version of P. Quiro Armstrong at the plate. It's interesting because essentially what we are talking about, whether you want to call it strikeouts or weak contact, do you hate that more than you love home runs? Because you can make contact, not hit the ball of the park, and be a very productive major league hitter.

I'm not even taking it down to like the Nico Horner said, but that kind of fits that mold. We know Nico's not striking out a bunch, and he's not, he's going to hit line drives. Now, he's not going to hit a bunch over the fence, but he's going to be an effective hitter because he's so consistent at getting on base and not making bad outs. Whereas Pete Carr Armstrong, you look at what he did in the clutch with runners in scoring position in the second half of last season. That's what made it so painful because there were plenty of opportunities in a lineup that for the first half of the season was one of, if not the best in baseball, as far as offense goes.

But the reason why they aggregated to a top five offense over the course of the season is players like PCA did not get it done. after the first half, and they were searching for it, if you will, and they had too big of a strike zone. So I am interested to see how much he pairs down what he believes is an acceptable pitch to just swing at. Start with that, and then work your way from that. And what does you really want to be as a ball player? Maybe that's a dumb question because every player wants to hit 30 to 40 home runs, but is he willing to accept that he needs to, again, take it down a notch, get smaller, as was written in the article with all of the statistics, too, that Layla's given. Well, and I think it's a, he can't be bad ball hitter.

Like, that only works for so many people. And the people it did work for are athletic outliers. Guerrero's basically. Both Guerrero. Vladimir Guerrero. His back also somehow folded in the middle whenever he, vertically, whenever he would swing a bat, like Vlad Sr. So that's, if that's the comp, that doesn't work for most everyone.

So that's why you're right, Groz. It's got to be, who do you want to be as a hitter? And that's when I think what goes back to, what is your approach to the fastball? When you figure that out, everything else I think will come into play a little bit better. We're not asking him to be Tony Gwynn. We're not asking him to be Kyle Schwerber, but we need him to be a little bit more consistent somewhere in the middle. Schwerver. Also, additionally, we've got our Twitch mob bringing up the Cubs slogans.

You know, this is the Cubs slogan this year. But I'm still in everybody end girl. No, but you got to say, this. That's a Cubs slogan. Because if you just say, this is the Cubs slogan, people were like, what is it? No, no, no, no. This is the Cubs Cubs CLEA. I saw it on a billboard on 290.

I saw it too. And I liked it. It resonated with you? It did resonate. And it hadn't resonated when I just heard it. I think I heard you guys talking about it. And then I saw it driving. I'm like, oh, I kind of like it.

Had a little red in parentheses. I think it was red and it said this. Was it in like a box? Yeah, it was like a box or brackets or parentheses. What's the difference between? brackets and parentheses. Brackets are something that you can put parentheses inside of to start with. Oh, wow.

That's very complicated. It's a newer type of thing is what it sounds like. If you're writing a bracket is like a, you're filling in the gap, they actually didn't say it. Parentheses usually add reference. Okay. So if you say he and the brackets, it'll be like P. Crow Armstrong because that's who the he was referring to.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. No problem. Also, our friend, 630 says 20 years in nuclear power and I've never heard of a nuclear laser. I didn't think it existed. But just something that was like focused.

It's just an idea, man. We are out here ideaing, okay? It's Friday. We're out here. We're mollifying as what we're doing. That's what our deal is today. Next thing you know, we're building a stadium in the middle of the lake. Coming up next here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie, I think that's where we've got to return to

is the latest that we heard from Jeff Bocultz of WBBM, what Mark has heard in his reporting. And then let's parse through some of what J.B. Pritzker had to say that's new today as we continue to figure out, What is the latest with the Bears Stadium discussions next?