Miguel Amaya’s minor league rehab is over as he’s spent the maximum 20 days on it. So unless the Cubs find something physically wrong with him and restart his time on the injured list, he’s going to be activated on Tuesday and added to the major league roster.

Craig Counsell had stated last week that Amaya was going to join the team in Toronto. Given that and the 20-day rehab limit, Josh is likely correct and Amaya will be activated today. The BCB After Dark article asked whether it’d be time to DFA Reese McGuire, as that’d be the only way to get Amaya on the active roster.

As Josh also noted, there is currently an open 40-man roster spot and that is likely going to be filled by the activation of Javier Assad.

Assad hasn’t pitched all year. He suffered an oblique injury during spring workouts and aggravated it during a rehab start with Iowa in April. Since beginning another rehab assignment last month, Assad has thrown 11 total innings, allowed nine hits, three walks and two runs and struck out 12. He’s maxed out at 63 pitches in three rehab outings.

For now, I would suspect Assad will head to the bullpen to throw long relief, though he could also wind up starting one of the games of the doubleheader Monday, or replace Colin Rea in the rotation.

And that leads me to the potential activation of Jameson Taillon. Taillon has made two rehab starts for Iowa and threw very well in the second one, allowing one run in 4.2 innings and striking out six, throwing 60 pitches. That outing was on Friday, and so presuming Taillon stays on a normal schedule:

No Iowa starter is listed for Wednesday yet, so it would make sense for Taillon to start that game, then he’d be ready to start one of the games of the doubleheader Monday against the Brewers at Wrigley Field. I suspect that at that point, Ben Brown probably gets sent back to Iowa so he can get regular work for the rest of August, and then Brown will re-join the MLB club when rosters expand to 28 in September.

Taillon had an up-and-down season before the injury, which was not arm-related (strained calf muscle). After an awful first 2025 start against the Diamondbacks March 28, he put together a 13-start run in which he posted a 2.99 ERA and 0.919 WHIP, then had three mediocre-to-bad starts just before the injury.

Getting back a healthy Taillon and Assad will be a big boost to a pitching staff that could really use it. I hesitate to say that Taillon’s return could be equivalent to acquiring a Mitch Keller-type starter by trade, but… yeah, actually, it could.

Watch for these transactions to happen this week and early next. As always, we await developments.