His Offensive Breakout Was Very Real, But Does That Mean Miguel Amaya is Viable?

[Matthew Trueblood]

Unlike his more famous fellow up-the-middle youngster, the Cubs' backstop did a lot of things you figure will last en route to a brilliant second half. Alas, unlike his teammate, he also has dubious defensive value, and that's a problem.

Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

After his brief benching for a reset and a mechanical adjustment in early July, Miguel Amaya got a whole lot better, in a way that figures to be sticky going into 2025--at least to some extent. Whereas Pete Crow-Armstrong's torrid August gave way to a September that reminded everyone how much he still has to work on, the remade Amaya is capable of some very impressive things in the batter's box.

In August, I wrote about Amaya's changes, and the way they followed a logical, almost linear pattern:

1. At the behest of his coaching staff, he ditched the leg kick in his load phase.
2. He struggled for a while to generate the same bat speed or exit velocity that he'd shown with his old mechanics.
3. Over time, though, he rediscovered that explosiveness, and was able to integrate it into a better overall setup, with less swing-and-miss.

Nothing stays exactly the same over a stretch as long as the one we're talking about, especially for a young hitter, but Amaya would continue his impressive hitting over the final five weeks. It sure looks like he can be consistently above-average at the plate with his altered mechanics and a cleaned-up approach.

Span	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	In-Zone Swing %	Chase %	Contact %	LA > 2 deg. %	wSSEV
Through June	187	.189	.253	.260	71.8	33.1	74.7	59.8	84.8
July-Sept.	176	.277	.326	.459	77.1	33.8	80.6	65.5	93.1

Amaya is an aggressive hitter, but well within the realm of average or normal--as opposed to Crow-Armstrong, whose free-swinging tendencies are as extreme as almost any hitter in the league. Once he tweaked his swing to simultaneously emphasize loft and make more contact, he really took off, and it didn't require anything crazy to happen. He ran a sub-.300 BABIP even in his strong second half.

To explain the rightmost columns above quickly: the truly calamitous batted-ball outcomes are on low-hit grounders--balls hit not only on the ground, but actually downward or on a straight line off the bat. There's merit in both line drives and fly balls, and even in the high-trajectory grounder, since those get through the infield considerably more often than others. Amaya was fairly extreme in his tendency to hit low-trajectory grounders in the first half of the season. Thereafter, his launch angle distribution got much more healthy.

That's also reflected in my homespun weighted sweet spot exit velocity (wSSEV), which correlates with real run production as well as almost any metric you could cook up. It's the hitter's average exit velocity on batted balls with a launch angle between 10 and 35 degrees, weighted according to the per-at-bat frequency of generating such batted balls. A good wSSEV is in the high 80s or low 90s; Amaya went from subpar to excellent in this regard.

All of the offensive adjustments are encouraging, even if the real Amaya is most likely to be somewhere between his disastrous first half and his stellar second. It's not unreasonable to envision using him as a major part of the catching corps next year, in terms of getting offensive jolt from that position. However, we have to talk about Amaya, the defender, too.

Of the 59 catchers who played at least 250 innings this season, Amaya ranked 40th in Baseball Prospectus's Deserved Runs Prevented. Prospectus rated him as 2.7 runs below average as a pitch framer, and while he came out as the best blocker of errant pitches in the majors, that skill is relatively low-value: he only saved an estimated 1.5 runs that way. He also cost the team that same amount, per Prospectus, as the third-worst throwing catcher in the league, better only than Jonah Heim and Yasmani Grandal. That tracks, because Statcast pegs Amaya with the fifth-slowest pop time on steal attempts among 83 qualifying catchers.

If you believe in both his bat and his intangible skills as a game-caller and partner to pitchers, Amaya can still be a productive player with this relatively mild defensive deficiency. However, as the league adapts to the new rules of the pitch timer era, Amaya's inability to control the running game will only get more glaring. If he were a plus framer, it would be easier to work around that weakness, but he's settling in on the wrong side of average there, too. Defensively, the future doesn't look especially bright for him.

Given the market they'll face this winter, the Cubs probably can't and shouldn't move on from Amaya. While they further groom Moises Ballesteros and hope he sticks at the position, though, they should bring in a stout defensive partner for Amaya in the short term. If he was as well-liked as he appeared to be within the clubhouse. Christian Bethancourt would be a fine re-signing. He has the very thing Amaya lacks: an excellent arm behind the dish. He could come in as a catching relief specialist, which would also give Craig Counsell an excuse to take Amaya down for left-handed pinch-hitters in some good situations. That would be a creative and novel use of a roster spot, but Bethancourt isn't a fully qualified timeshare catcher, so the plan would need to be to start Amaya a lot and counteract his early workload by phasing in either Ballesteros or some external acquisition during the season.

The catcher's spot is still a question mark for the Cubs this winter, but the tone of the question is a bit more hopeful and a bit less resigned than it might have been a few months ago. Amaya has earned some form of extended opportunity. Unless there's a very eager trade partner out there, that will mean starting the season as the Cubs' primary catcher. It just leaves a lot of important work to do in filling the secondary catcher's role.

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[Bertz]

I'm not especially worried about Amaya's defense, though that's me thinking it's fine not liking it.

It's pretty clear TJ surgery killed his arm.  There might be a bit more he can bring out heading into year 3 post surgery, but it's not going to be marginal not magically take him from bad to good (especially with bad pop times on top of it).  That said, we're finishing year two post rule changes, I don't think SB volume is going to climb much more.  We got a massive 41% increase in SBs in year 1, and just a 3% increase in year 2.  Magnitude-wise this stays as a 4-5 run problem.

The framing is tougher to say.  He had a good reputation coming up and was good last year.  I wouldn't take him being bad as settled.  On the flip side I never watch him and go "Wow, what are great block!" but he graded out exceptionally there.   My guess is these both pull back closer to average.  Hell there might be some direct push/pull between the two skills based on how he sets up.

Amaya's value is really going to come down to that bat.  It is encouraging that he was better essentially across the board after that breather, that said it was less than 200 PAs and there was some good fortune that he received as well.  In the first half he had a .207/.271 wOBA/xwOBA, in the second half it was .331/.313.  Clear and obvious improvement but I think the raw results overstate the magnitude. 

My best guess is his bat ends up above average for a catcher but below average overall, something like the 96 wRC+ he had as a rookie.  Combined with the glove and his profile screams "Second Division Starter."  Given the attrition at catcher that's fine, especially at pre-FA prices.  But he's got to be paired with a better counterpart than the Christian Bethancourt's of the world.