Miguel Amaya’s leadership, intangibles have helped him grow into Cubs’ primary backstop
Jordan Wicks still has the memory etched in his mind.
It was late April in 2023 and he was starting for the Tennessee Smokies against the Birmingham Barons, the White Sox Double-A affiliate. In the 1st inning, he walked the first hitter of the game on 4 pitches, 2 of them arm-side misses out of the zone. He worked out of the dreaded leadoff walk by picking up an inning-ending strikeout, but 4 of the 5 pitches in the at-bat ran arm-side.
He knew something was off. As he walked back into the dugout at Regions Field in Birmingham, his catcher, Miguel Amaya was there to talk with him. It was the first time they were batterymates, but Amaya spoke up to the former first-round pick.
“‘Hey, you’re cutting yourself off. You’re not online. Stay online and stay through me and we’ll get to glove side,’” Wicks remembered Amaya telling him.
Instead of keeping thoughts to himself, Amaya used the opportunity to exploit the opposing lineup.
“We’ve shown them so far, everything’s been away,” Amaya told Wicks. “The inside part of the plate is wide open now.”
It worked.
Wicks retired the next 12 hitters, pitching 5 no-hit innings with 7 strikeouts in the outing.
“That was one of the first times I was like OK, this isn’t a guy that’s just back there catching to catch and he’s gonna go get his ABs in,” Wicks said. “He cares. He’s attentive. He watches every aspect of the game and so it was really cool to see.”
The Cubs have had a first-hand look at that this season, as the second-year catcher has established himself as their starting backstop. The 25-year-old Panamanian has started over half (18) of the Cubs games this season, after serving as the backup to Yan Gomes to end 2023.
He’s taken over thanks in part to his promise — he was one of the Cubs’ top prospects coming up the minor-league ladder — but even more so for his poise behind the plate and ability to manage his pitching staff.
“I think, No. 1, just the confidence he carries back there. You see him more confident in his total game — receiving, throwing, game calling, game managing,” pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said. “You can feel that confidence. And when you’re a pitcher and you know the catcher behind the plate is confident and you can see it, it gives you that confidence.”
A year ago, this situation was far from a guarantee.
Amaya went through the gamut after being added to the Cubs’ 40-man roster in late 2019.
The COVID-19 pandemic and a pair of injuries (Tommy John surgery, Lisfranc fracture) limited him to just 63 games from 2020 to the start of 2023. So, as the calendar flipped to May after that start in Birmingham 12 months ago, the major leagues seemed far away.
But then injury struck Gomes and the Cubs were faced with a full 40-man roster, meaning the Cubs had to call up Amaya. He was optioned to Iowa when Gomes returned but then came back up and spent most of the rest of the season with the big-league club, catching between-start bullpens for veterans and serving as Kyle Hendricks’ primary catcher.
“I mean, as a guy who’s had some injuries myself and stuff, I think it’s cool when an organization like stays with you and believes in you,” Jameson Taillon said. “I think whenever you have injuries, let’s say a prospect list might bang you a little bit or you down. I have a feeling that the Cubs always held him in very high regard.
“That’s a really cool thing when an organization trusts you and believes in you and wants to build around you and stuff.”
That’s because of Amaya’s leadership and intangibles. In his first outing of the year last month, Taillon was reminded of that firsthand.
After retiring the first 8 batters of the game, Miami’s Nick Fortes gave Taillon a battle, working a 3-2 count. On the 7th pitch of the at-bat, Amaya called for a four-seam fastball that Fortes fouled away. The next two pitches — both four-seamers — produced the same result — “a foul-ball war”, Taillon called it.
On the 10th pitch, Amaya called for a sinker, but gave Taillon a big target in the middle of the zone, knowing a few things; one, it’s not Taillon’s pitch, so he can’t call for too precise of a location and, two, it was just different enough of a pitch that it could disrupt Fortes enough.
“That’s telling me don’t be too perfect with this,” Taillon said. “Just if we get it moving the other way, we should be able to get him out.”
It worked.
Fortes grounded out softly on a sinker to Dansby Swanson to end the inning.
“So, it’s stuff like that where like he’s really following along,” Taillon said. “[He’s having] conversations in the dugout between innings, all that sort of stuff.”
As the Cubs have been struck by the injury bug to their starting rotation, the combination of Amaya and Gomes has been a steadying presence behind the plate. He’s started in 9 of Javier Assad and Shota Imanaga’s 12 starts, the Cubs’ two best starters so far this season.
“Really that’s been the most impressive thing, that guys like to work with him,” president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “We like that tandem and hopefully those guys can just keep on alternating and staying fresh because I do think that’s a good example of the length of the season. You can play your catcher almost every day early in the season, but that’s going to wear you down later.
“The more we can have both those guys playing well, the more we can keep them both fresh and I think that’ll help both guys play well.”
And Amaya is doing that by being a key conduit to the Cubs’ pitching staff.
“He really has a really good leadership quality, which is really what you want out of a catcher,” Wicks said. “When you have those defensive catchers that you always talk about, like the guys that excelled defensively, it was like having another coach on the field is what people always say. You really see that capability with Miggy.
“You see how he can lead his team and he takes a lot of pride in his work.”