The Chicago Cubs have multiple star prospects in their pipeline.
Many of them are projected to become breakouts for the team at the time of their careers, winning the World Series from 2015-18 and creating a long Cubs battle that they didn’t see when they made two more appearances in NLCS.
But Chicago hopes to see immediate results this year.
They left “all” by squeezing and trading Kyle Tucker and Ryan to add Kyle Tucker and Ryan this winter. And since both are free agents after the season, there is a lot of pressure on the group to return to the playoffs for the first time since 2020.
The key to becoming a reality is catcher Miguel Amaya.
The former top prospect took over as a full-time starter last year, which coincides with the position group’s offense, and is one of the major league baseball of this past season.
Amaya’s struggle was an important reason.
He cut .232/.288/.357 with 82 OPS+ and hit eight homers to run the 363 plate appearance 47 times.
Taking his bat to a useful level is the next step in his progress as a big league catcher, with star prospect Moises Ballesteros showing off his ability to lake regardless of the level of competition he has faced.
Performance on the plate isn’t just something current catchers need to improve.
Amaya is an above average defensive catcher and recorded a defensive bawa of 1.5 in 2024, but the biggest black mark on his profile is his inability to hold the runners.
Last season, he caught just 18 batters who stole from 96 attempts, resulting in a terrible rate of 18.8%.
Chicago hopes to be far better at controlling the opposing team’s run game this year, but they didn’t get a good start in that respect against the Hansin Tigers in the exhibit game, allowing three steals in three attempts in a surprising 3-0 loss.
As for that possibility, it is the underlying metric that Amaya has.
According to baseball’s Savant, he was in the 20th percentile when it came to catching the stolen percentage, mainly because his pop time was in the 4th percentile.
This may be something the Cubs have to manage throughout his career, as it does not suggest that he has a high ceiling when it comes to stopping the runners from stealing.
We’ll see how Amaya plays this season in terms of running games, which is something to be noted throughout the 2025 campaign.
