Two Too Close

I have more than a few shots that I didn't frame well, or didn't have enough reach with the lens.  The final test is can I crop enough to get a good image on a 23 inch monitor - and get a good image on a 23 inch monitor.
What follows is completely un-scientific.  The question is - is crop processing on the original image to a small section give a better image or increase the size of the image then crop to the size required for the monitor test?
For the D7200, a normal image size is 20 x 13.33 Inches.  So what if the image was enlarged say 400%?  To 80 x 53.33 inches?
I've tried what I would call aggressive cropping in some of the nature images and they didn't turn out very well on the monitor.  If you know what you were looking for you could see the pixels.  Damn gaming monitor.
Anyway, I thought maybe the algorithms to enlarge the image would be different than to shrink.  Worth a shot, eh?
This image followed that path.  It was enlarged to 400%, then cropped to 6.4 x 3.6 inches.
This is the original image.

This is the RAW image so a bit on the bland side.  But this is for the relative size of the subjects.
And this would be the final image, blow'd up and cropped close.

ISO 800, f/6.3, 1/8000 sec, 165 mm

NIKON D7200 Ver.1.04/70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6

Spare me the frozen prop stuff, already know it.  And a had a lot more lens to use, so framing could have been better.  It has occurred to me that because of the high speed, that this process was helped a bit.  So I'll look for a slower shot and see what happens.