Owen Caissie with a LOUD Homer, Heating Up, NLCS Memories, and Other Cubs Bullets

If each of the Phillies and Astros win today, that means we’re going to have no more playoff baseball until FRIDAY, when the World Series begins. So, I think maybe let’s say go Yankees and go Padres?

  • Owen Caissie was a later reveal on the AFL roster for the Cubs, which we think is because he was the injury replacement for Miguel Amaya. In other words, the Cubs may have been on the fence about sending the recently-turned-20-year-old outfield prospect to a league where he was going to be pretty darn young, and facing a whole lot of pitching of a caliber he hasn’t seen before. I don’t think any kind of serious PERFORMANCE expectations should’ve been placed on Caissie for the league – just a chance for him to get more at bats against high-quality pitching, and more reps in the outfield.
  • And Caissie did struggle a bit in his first handful of AFL games, which could be natural or could just be small sample. Whatever the case, he did go off last night, and that was mighty nice to see. This one, in particular, was a SHOT:
  • Caissie is hitting .242/.286/.424 over his 9 games, which is an OPS a little below the middle-of-the-pack for the league. Sometimes I think we lose sight of Caissie when talking about the Cubs’ looooaded outfield prospect situation, and that’s probably because he’s the only one of those top 15 prospects who doesn’t play center field (which does matter). But Caissie’s offensive upside is certainly right there with any of the other outfield prospects in the system, and the Cubs sending him to the AFL at such a young age is a reminder of their belief in that bat.
  • As an aside: Cubs lefty Bailey Horn threw another scoreless inning in that game, and he’s one of just two pitchers in the league who has thrown at least 10 innings without giving up an earned run yet.
  • Only by virtue of its comparison to his homer earlier in the series did this one not look crazy:
  • That’s 112.5 mph off the bat and 429 feet for Kyle Schwarber. He is just BOMBING them in the NLCS.
  • Marlins could be getting close to making a managerial decision:
  • Enjoying some NLCS memories:
  • Holy crap. This seriously keeps getting more and more ridiculous as it goes:
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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