The Cubs announced today that catcher Miguel Amaya and right-hander Javier Assad have both been reinstated from the 60-day injured list. In corresponding active roster moves, the Cubs have optioned right-hander Nate Pearson to Triple-A and designated infielder Jon Berti for assignment. The 40-man roster had one vacancy, with Berti’s DFA clearing another.
Berti, 35, signed with the Cubs in the offseason. He has long been a scrappy and versatile utility player in the bigs, playing almost every position on the diamond while stealing bases and often producing offense around league average.
The Cubs came into the year with some uncertainty at third base and they threw a few things at the wall there. They traded Isaac Paredes to the Astros as part of the Kyle Tucker deal, opening a path for prospect Matt Shaw to earn the job. Just in case Shaw didn’t hit the ground running, they had some backup plans. They acquired Vidal Bruján, took Gage Workman in the Rule 5 draft, in addition to signing Justin Turner and Berti.
Most of those moves didn’t work out well, including Berti. He has hit just .210/.262/.230 in his 107 plate appearances this year. He hung around the roster as Shaw and other guys struggled. Workman was jettisoned long ago. More recently, Shaw has started to click and the Cubs also added Willi Castro ahead of the deadline. That bumped out Bruján a couple of weeks back and now Berti loses his roster spot as well.
With the trade deadline having passed, the Cubs will have to put Berti on waivers. Given his struggles and his salary, he won’t be claimed. He has more than enough service time to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency. It’s possible the Cubs skip that formality and simply release him.
At that point, any club could sign Berti and would only have to pay him the prorated portion of the $760K league minimum for any time spent on the roster. That amount would be subtracted from what the Cubs pay. It’s possible he garners interest at that point from a club looking to bolster its bench. Berti came into this year with 97 steals, a .259/.337/.366 line and 95 wRC+ while playing everywhere except catcher and first base.
Without Berti, the Cubs are going with a three-catcher setup. While Amaya has been on the IL, Carson Kelly has been the primary backstop, backed up by Reese McGuire. No one in that trio can be optioned to the minors, so the Cubs are keeping all three of them, at least for now.
Assad’s return seemingly shuffles the rotation a bit. Assad is listed as tonight’s probable starter. Ben Brown was previously in that spot, so it seems he will slide back into a long relief role. Assad posted a 3.73 earned run average over 29 starts for the Cubs last year. He hasn’t been able to build on that here in 2025, as he suffered an oblique strain during spring training and then re-aggravated that strain during the season. He’ll be making his season debut north of the border tonight as the Cubs are in Toronto to face the Blue Jays.
Photo courtesy of Gregory Fisher, Imagn Images
Makes total sense to me but the Cubs need to bring up Caissie.
The earliest they will bring up Caissie is September 1.
Caissie wouldn’t start five games a week in Chicago.
Who cares how many starts a young player gets after being called up with a MLB team, once you get to mid August. If Caissie can help from this point on, I agree, he should be called up. And if he hits better than Happ, he should be getting more ABs than Happ.
Caissie will never see the field in 2025 because that will prove Hoyer is a moron for trading for Tucker in the first place. Even if he goes 0 for September, Gollum will never take the chance.
Such a meatball take Unclemike
Clearly, the secret to the Brewers success was not really Craig Counsell.
The secret to the Brewers success is that they develop talent better than the team you cheer for.
Correct. And they also scout for talent better.
Counsell is a good manager, but the Cubs’ problems are in the front office.
Brewers’ fans hatred for Counsell is amusing. They don’t seem to realize that their expressions of it reveal that they are unsophisticated rubes. He went where they offered him more money. Simple as that.
As a long time Cubs fan I have nothing but professional respect for the Brewers organization. They just do it right. Draft, scout, develop. While being very financially savy. Doesn’t matter which players they loose to injury, trade, free agency. Including their former manager. They loose a player for whatever reason, no problem. They just go to their minor leagues (As I call it their local Big Box store) and it seems like a plug and play. Very impressive.
A team who knows how to use their Farm System? Wonder what that would be like? Gollum just fattens up prospects until they start to rot and then sends them to the slaughterhouse. Trades them for some magic beans.
Maybe it was Craig realizing Murph was the real man to lead that org and he could glide into chi town and get paid so kind of a win win maybe that’s Counsells last gift to Mil baseball.. probably not but hey I said maybe…..
Fly away little Berti
Burdi and Bert got released in less than 24 hours. It was weird seeing the Cubs headline as MLBTR sometimes reposts with an update and at first I thought it was more info on Burdi despite Cubs being in the headline.
DFAing Berti beats DFAing McGuire.
What happened to Berti? He was a pretty useful bench player in Miami but has been pretty bad since leaving
He was Cubs 3rd string catcher now replaced by Amaya
Once again Gollum makes a mistake. Bringing up Assad when he’s obviously not all the way back yet if you watched him pitch reeks of the Hodge move 2.0. He has Birdsell, Noland and Sanders all stretched out. Idiot. At least Callis and friends have restored the top 30 list to what it should have been all year. except for the draft picks obviously. About time.
Ummm….Birdsell is out for the season. First lat….now elbow. Elbow…..done. Take him out of your schtick.
Just saw him pitch. I hadn’t heard that but Minor League Injury info is kind of few and far between.
You need to stop consuming whatever substance makes you such an angry person.
He just never got a chance a play this year and he was hurt most of last year.
Aaron Miles.
Doesn’t matter anymore. Much too late. Division to brewers and cubs in fight now to just make playoffs With only homers to score, have cubs forgotten how to run bases?
I liked Berti as a player and person, and I wish he could’ve found more success on this team. He seems like a great teammate and just didn’t really get much playing time to solidify a role. Carrying three catchers is definitely an odd choice, but not entirely surprising.
It gives the Cubs an extra hitter now. Berti is a good fielder, not much of an hitter: He’ll make a great coach after he hangs up his cleats.
With Turner still on the roster, the bench is limited.
Yep, none of the catchers seem like strong choices for a pinch hitter. None of them have additional positional versatility. You basically have Turner who can play corner. Infield, Castro who can be a super utility player, and then two catchers.
You have Castro and Shaw who can both play just about anywhere. Then you have Turner, Castro and Shaw who can play 3rd. Then Amaya was originally a 3B. No idea when he played there last. But given the choice between Berti as 3rd C or Amaya as a 4th 3B, I know which way I’d go.
…if only there was a website (that could be linked in the article) that could provide that information. Alas, one can dream.
Does anybody realize that caissie only 44 in mlb pipeline? Why are they holding onto him thinking he’s so special even with Tucker who’s doing zilch?
Cubs fans always view their top prospect as the second coming. All fanbases do this, but Cubs are the worst.
Where have you gone Matt Mervis?
Poor berti! Berti hardly the problem. Looks like another brewer to be and will wait to use him vs cubs next week. In which he’ll do damage. Entire cubs organization doesn’t know how to get best out of their players.
He ain’t the answer either. The answers will never see the field thanks to Gollum.
Who is Gollum?
The POBO. You know, Must have the precious!
Thanks Alan53. I was wondering the same thing. I thought Uncle was really losing it. But now I get it. I’m slow at my old age.
Come on Fred…you know Uncle. Only he can turn a DFA of Jon Berti into the flavor of the week way of bashing Hoyer. “Gollum” will stick for a while and then we will get something new. He’s got to stay fresh….lots of bashing he’s gonna do over the next three or four or six years.
I’m the former Lit professor, and I needed to be reminded! “I grow old, I grow old…. (TS Eliot)
Well this may back fire for the Cubs. Brewers pick him up to replace Seigler, then becomes Zorbist for the last 2 months. Book it
@stubby: The Brewers’ results are irrelevant to the Cubs at this point. I doubt very much that Berti will end up there, but if he does, I hope he helps the Brewers win their remaining games against the Reds and Cardinals.
I get what your saying but if they find someone who could absolutely help them down the stretch and be that guy that helps if someone falls off you better believe they are keeping an eye out for them. Milwaukee bench is our weakest link right now in Monso and Seigler. Milwaukee may have made a mistake in not giving Clarke that chance to be a David Frye, Durbon or Moore.
Perhaps. But since the Brewers literally win every game, I don’t think they have any weak links.
That said, as much pitching as they seem to have, I think they might have gone for another starting pitcher at the deadline. It is not inconceivable that the Phillies or Dodgers could beat them in the NLCS because of superior starting pitching.
I like the Berti release. He should be able to keep his hand on the base–even when he is for no good reason wearing an oven mitt on it. The idea of being on a team is to WIN key games for the team, not to LOSE them. Buh-bye.
LOL. Brett Taylor, a shill’s shill, is *already* making excuses for Assad, who has always been, shall we charitably say, *limited* as a major-league pitcher. Taylor is ridiculous.
Full disclosure: Taylor banned me from commenting a few years ago because he misinterpreted a comment I made as being antigay. He is not particularly bright and could not follow the nuanced point I was making, and focused on a word that he misunderstood instead. Life for him must be a kind of endless series of not-quite-understanding things that smart people say.
But I have no hard feelings; I continue to read him anyway, for yuks.
Who fk is Gollum lol?
From Tolkien’s Hobbit, Uncle Mike explains. He liked shiny things; Uncle is comparing Hoyer to him.
Wouldn’t he be considered Sméagol, since he didn’t acquire the ring yet? Unless we’re counting the one Theo helped him get.
Perhaps a better comparison would be Smaug, who is more inherently attracted to gold and shiny things and literally hoards/protects them.
🙁
The Cubs hitters seem to have given up. They’re just dipping the shoulder and hitting lazy flies and jogging back to the dugout. They have all become apathetic snots like The Egregious Tucker. They are on their way to finally getting swept in a series, and it will be downhill from there.
Where is that idiot who used to keep posting that Cubs fans should buckle up for a great season and October? I forget his name. One silver lining: he seems to have gone away.
At this point, I have to wonder if Suzuki and PCA, despite their good RBI starts, will even make it to 100 RBIs. Their collapse has been almost total, and they seem to be just playing out the string.