Standing at his Wrigley Field locker after yet another dramatic performance, Pete Crow-Armstrong remembered a takeaway from a recent chat with Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell. The message wasn’t specific to the All-Star center fielder. Counsell described it as “just shooting the s—.” The big idea still resonated.“We get to play this game,” Crow-Armstrong said. “We’re all lucky enough to be able to show up every day. ‘Couns’ made an interesting point to me the other day when he said, ‘It kind of feels like it’s a bunch of have to. We have to get the job done. We have to pick it up, turn it around, win these games. You can’t forget that we get to do this.’”Crow-Armstrong had just launched two home runs off the San Francisco Giants, including one with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning that set up a 3-2 walk-off victory in the 10th. By that point (June 6), the Cubs had plummeted from up 3 ½ games in the division to trailing the Milwaukee Brewers by 6 ½ games in the National League Central race.The roller-coaster nature of this Cubs season is perhaps best exemplified by Crow-Armstrong, who left spring training to play for Team USA, which was supposed to be a superpower, but wound up losing to Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic’s championship game.As Opening Day approached, Crow-Armstrong’s camp put the finishing touches on a six-year, $115 million contract extension that certified him as a face of the franchise.The boos then rained down on Crow-Armstrong at Dodger Stadium in April, a reaction to his previous comments in a Chicago magazine cover story that called out their fans for being phony. As a lightning rod, he also heard it on the South Side, leading to a profane exchange with a Chicago White Sox fan that went viral.After Memorial Day, his OPS still lingered in the .670s. Separating his offense from his defense — as well as the negative attention from his interaction with a female White Sox fan — became more challenging.“I’m growing up in the middle of all of it,” Crow-Armstrong said. “Contrary to what a lot of people probably believe, I’m absolutely getting better for all the downs, and the ups as well.”One month out from the All-Star Game, not only is Crow-Armstrong deserving of a return invitation, he’s performing at an MVP level.Crow-Armstrong’s mistakes in center field resulted in two Little League home runs, yet he still entered Sunday ranked first in the majors in Fielding Run Value (15), tied for first in Defensive Runs Saved (15) and second in Outs Above Average (13).In terms of Wins Above Replacement, Baseball Reference rated Crow-Armstrong (3.9) as baseball’s most valuable position player heading into Sunday’s games. With 12 home runs and 16 stolen bases, he’s on pace for close to another 30/30 season. And, at the age of 24, he’s not a finished product yet.“He’s still learning his approach,” Cubs outfielder Ian Happ said. “All of us go through times when looking in a certain spot — or looking for a certain thing — makes a lot of sense to us. And then somehow that goes away, and then you have to find something else, and the league adjusts and things change. It’s never consistent.“I can’t tell you that I go up there every time looking in the same spot for the same thing. It’s different every day. And he handles certain parts of the zone really, really well. I think he’s still trying to figure out how to get his eyes in the best place to hit that stuff more often.“For everything that he’s done in this game already, he’s still very young. He’s done a really good job of being able to continue to be a productive hitter while learning.”Physically, Crow-Armstrong has grown stronger while also lowering his chase rate and improving his swing decisions. He does not view his hitting mechanics as a math equation or a science project. It’s a state of mind: feeling prepared, not dwelling on the negatives, and trusting his movements.In simple terms, he’s swinging the bat faster and hitting the ball harder. He’s reached base in 18 consecutive games, compiling 14 extra-base hits during that stretch. As a leadoff hitter (59 plate appearances), he’s batting .348 with five home runs, a .418 on-base percentage and a 1.099 OPS.“I’m very confident in my work right now,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I’ve seen it pay some nice dividends (with) the plan that I’m taking into each at-bat. If anything, I have to realize that if I’m in the eight-hole, it should be the same exact approach going into every at-bat.”While so many other areas of the roster are dealing with injuries and underperformance, Crow-Armstrong’s hot streak has helped keep the Cubs above .500 (37-35) and in the wild-card race. With Sunday’s 5-1 loss to the Giants, the Cubs completed a 3-3 road trip through Coors Field and San Francisco, where they won their first series in more than a month.They get to return home for a three-game series against the Colorado Rockies that begins Monday night at the Friendly Confines, where Crow-Armstrong remains a highlight-reel defender, the player most likely to get into it with the fans, and a must-see at-bat.“You’re out of things to say when he gets on these rolls,” Counsell explained recently in the Wrigley Field media room. “I know you guys ask about him a lot and I get a little (short). Like, ‘Is this it? Is this it?’ And I actually understand, now, why, because it’s so great when it happens. It’s single-handed, at times.“You should be trying to figure out when it’s coming. I don’t have the answer of when it’s coming. I will never have the answer of when it’s coming. But it’s pretty cool to watch.”