Miami Marlins president Peter Bendix gushes over new prospect Owen Caissie's immense power and hard-hitting ability.
The Miami Marlins needed to get a big-time prospect in return for a pitcher like Edward Cabrera, and team president Peter Bendix feels they got one in Owen Caissie.
Caissie, a 23-year-old outfielder, had been the top prospect in the Chicago Cubs’ system, and he already has big-league experience under his belt.
Although Caissie struggled in his short time in the bigs — a .192 batting average last season— the sample size is only 26 at-bats.
In 1,841 minor-league at-bats, Caissie has produced, hitting .280 with 81 homers and 301 RBI.
That’s the production that, to the Marlins, helped make Caissie worth trading a potential future ace for.
The day after Miami finalized the trade — in which it also acquired prospects Cristian Hernandez and Edgardo De Leon — Marlins president Peter Bendix spoke with reporters via Zoom.
In Caissie— who MILB.com has as the 47th-ranked prospect in baseball— Bendix feels the Marlins are “getting somebody who hits the ball very hard and hits for a lot of power.”
“It’s a hard thing to find in any area,” Bendix said. It's usually very expensive to acquire and I think every good team needs power. With him, we're getting someone who has shown the ability to make adjustments as he's gotten older and as he's faced better pitching.”
This is similar to a deal the Marlins made in July 2024 that, so far, has worked out well.
Miami traded a promising young starting pitcher in Trevor Rogers to the Baltimore Orioles in return for two position players: infielder Connor Norby and outfielder Kyle Stowers.
At the time, Norby was thought to be the centerpiece, since he was Baltimore’s No. 5 prospect.
But so far, Stowers has been the star of the deal, making it to the All-Star team in his first full season last year.
If Caissie works out, he and Stowers could be a formidable 1-2 punch.
“(Caissie is) still very young and has room for improvement offensively and defensively, but his performance to date in his career has been exceptional,” Bendix said. “To have somebody who's on that career trajectory much earlier in their career, who crushed Triple-A pitching at a much younger age, that's really exciting.
To Bendix’s point, Caissie made it to AAA at the age of 21.
Bendix also knows that nothing is a sure thing, and Caissie might not be a superstar right away.
“There's certainly risk there, but it is unusual to have a player like Caissie, at his age, perform the way that he did at a high level, and that makes us really excited,” Bendix said.
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