How Amaya earned trust in his first Cubs stint

This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian’s Cubs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CHICAGO -- Hayden Wesneski admitted he overprepared for his outing against the Marlins on Sunday. With rookie catcher Miguel Amaya behind the plate, Wesneski thought he might have to lead the way with in-game pitch decisions.

In the first inning, Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy noticed Wesneski shake off one of Amaya’s signs. After the pitcher agreed to the next call, he gave up a hit. It prompted a quick conversation in the dugout between frames.

“I said, ‘Hey, what was the thought process there?’” Hottovy said. “He goes, ‘Well, I thought I saw something, and I wanted to take some of the stress off Amaya to call a game.’”

From that moment on, Wesneski decided to shut his mind off and follow Amaya’s lead, handing the game-calling keys to the 24-year-old catcher. The righty allowed just one run over six innings in a strong performance, and Amaya went on to handle 10 of the 14 innings that night.

“I'm telling you right now, that guy, he's very prepared,” Wesneski said. “He's very mature. And I'm impressed with his game calling. That’s one thing that's really tough moving up through the ranks. It's not necessarily the framing and the blocking. It's like, the playing with the game. He's playing the game with it. And it actually blew my mind.”

Amaya -- ranked No. 14 on Pipeline’s Top 30 prospects list for the Cubs -- emerged as a callup from Double-A Tennessee when Yan Gomes needed to be placed on MLB’s seven-day concussion injured list. On Wednesday, Gomes was activated and Amaya was optioned to Triple-A Iowa.

“He did a tremendous job,” Gomes said. “He got nothing but praise from everyone here. I talked to him [before he was optioned]. He impressed a lot of people.”

In his six-game stay with Chicago, Amaya earned high praise from Cubs’ pitchers, the coaching staff and manager David Ross. He absorbed information from veteran catchers Tucker Barnhart and Gomes in pregame meetings, applied feedback during the games and made adjustments when necessary. In Amaya’s 31 innings behind the plate, Cubs pitchers logged a 2.32 ERA.

“Catching all these guys,” Amaya said, “and them trusting my calls, that gives me so much confidence.”

Amaya has been a highly-touted prospect for several seasons, but injuries limited him to 63 games across the 2021-22 campaigns. He was off to a strong start at Double-A this year, hitting .273 with four homers and a 1.070 OPS in 13 games before the Cubs came calling.

Ross, a longtime catcher in the Majors, said he was impressed with how Amaya worked with the pitchers, stayed calm in key moments defensively and showed off solid plate discipline with plenty of hard-hit balls in play.

“Miggy’s definitely put himself on the map,” Ross said.

Hottovy said another benefit of Amaya’s stint in the Majors will be heading back to the farm system with first-hand knowledge of how the big league team prepares and operates. The information obtained in Chicago meetings can now be applied better in his game-planning with pitchers in Iowa.

And when the Cubs need a catcher again, they have even more confidence in Amaya being able to handle the job.

“Winning those guys over and having the veteran guys commenting on his calmness was really impressive,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “No doubt, it gives a lot more confidence [in Amaya] going forward.

“I mean, he’s a guy that’s been a top prospect for a long time -- he just had major injuries. Hopefully, now he can stay healthy. I think a healthy version of him can play catcher in the big leagues for a long time.”