You all know about the serious ankle injury suffered by Miguel Amaya in Wednesday night’s win. I won’t belabor it here; if you haven’t seen it yet and want to, check out the video in the game recap.
After the game manager Craig Counsell said Amaya would be headed to the injured list, and in fact that’s what’s happened. And as noted by Josh in After Dark, outfielder Owen Caissie has been called up from Triple-A Iowa.
The Cubs made these moves official before Thursday’s game.
Caissie was acquired by the Cubs nearly five years ago, in December 2020 in the Yu Darvish trade with the Padres. He had been selected in the second round of that year’s abbreviated five-round draft and hadn’t played in the Padres organization before the deal, so all of his minor-league play has been in the Cubs organization.
Caissie, who turned 22 last month, is batting .289/.389/.566 (100-for-346) in 93 games with the I-Cubs this year, with 26 doubles and 22 home runs. He’s played mainly right field at Iowa, with some games in left field and as a DH. I’d expect him to mostly DH for the Cubs, with perhaps an occasional game in right or left field to give Kyle Tucker or Ian Happ a break.
Caissie is the Cubs’ No. 1 prospect, per MLB Pipeline, and they also rank him as the 45th-best overall MLB prospect.
I wish Caissie the best as he makes his MLB debut, especially if he makes it today in Toronto, as he’s a native of Burlington, Ontario, which is on the western outskirts of the Toronto metro area.
There’s one last thing I wanted to note about him, and it’s actually scattered throughout this article. That’s the spelling of his name.
It’s C-A-I-S-S-I-E. Not “Cassie.” (I know some of those spellings from some of you might have been due to autocorrect.) It’s pronounced like “Casey.”
Onward. Today’s game preview will post at 12 noon CT.