TRADE: Cubs Land Flamethrowing Reliever Nate Pearson from Blue Jays

[Matthew Trueblood]

Amid a season derailed by injuries to the hard-throwing, high-leverage relievers they were hoping to count on, the Cubs acquired a hard-throwing reliever with team control--but also a long history of injuries, and some questions about his ability to pitch in high leverage.

Image courtesy of © David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

The numbers on Nate Pearson tell a pretty fair story. He's capable of racking up strikeouts, but control and command are major problems. The Cubs are taking a chance on him as a change-of-scenery guy, landing him from the Blue Jays with two and a half years left before the righty hits free agency.

Pearson's fastball sits 98 and touches 102. He's always had that ability, but staying healthy and finding a secondary pitch to complement that fastball have been persistent problems. As a result, even in what is his best MLB season to date, he has a 5.63 ERA. He's struck out 28% of opposing batters this season, but is also walking over 9% and giving up too many home runs. 

We'll see what they gave up, and there will be more updates here, but for now, this move feels like an acho of last season's José Cuas deal. The team brought in an underachieving right-handed reliever with some obvious features of interest and some team control remaining. The question will be whether they're the right group to bring everything together for the talented arm.

UPDATE: A Bit More About Pearson, and Now We Know the Return
Every pitcher is unique in some ways, but if you looked at the picture accompanying this article and thought that the Cubs had Luke Little and Porter Hodge and were hoping to complete the set, you would be in the right ballpark. Pearson was a first-round pick by the Blue Jays in 2017, one pick after the Cubs took fellow Florida junior-college arm Brendon Little (not to be confused with Luke), and after a strong start in pro ball, he became a perennial top-100 prospect.

That label is a bit of a backhanded compliment, though, because if your career goes to plan, you escape prospect list eligibility before you can be on as many of them (five times for Baseball America) as Pearson was. He battled injuries and never got over the hump to really last as a big-league starter. Now, he's about to turn 28 years old and has only once pitched more than 50 innings in a season, across all levels. 

Worse, Pearson's sheer stuff hasn't always translated into great outcomes. His fastball is a little bit straight, although it does have a flat vertical approach angle from a low three-quarter slot. Control is the problem. He doesn't throw the heater for strikes consistently enough, and it gets him into trouble. His slider is missing more bats on a per-swing basis this year, but it's not getting enough swings, period.

For the right to try to help Pearson find what's eluded him, the Cubs gave up Yohendrick Pinango, who briefly had low-grade prospect hype but no longer looked likely to figure into the team's plans.

He would have needed to be added to the 40-man roster this winter, so the Cubs just elected to commit that same spot to the imminent relief ace upside of Pearson. They lose no flexibility, either, because they can always non-tender Pearson this winter and get that roster spot back if things don't work out.

As with Cuas last season, this move is about shoring up the bullpen right now, but much, much more so about trying to find medium-term relief help at a very low cost, relative to (for instance) spending on that segment of the roster in free agency. It's a sound way to build a bullpen and a good way to manage risk and scarce assets. Because these are relief pitchers, though, there are no guarantees that it will work, as Cuas should remind us. Pinango, like Nelson Velázquez, isn't worth missing much, so while this is far from a transformational move, it's an intriguing and perfectly solid one. Much hinges on the team's ability to help Pearson throw some strikes with his fastball and force hitters to fish for his slider.

UPDATE 2: It's a 2-for-1.
It did feel a bit like Pinango was too little to get for Pearson, from Toronto's perspective, and now we can see why. The Cubs also threw in Josh Rivera, the University of Florida alumnus and third-round pick from last year's Draft. Rivera is very much a future utility infielder or organizational depth piece, rather than any kind of budding star, but he might have a better chance of playing 200 games in the big leagues than Pinango does. 

This feels, then, like the Cubs consolidating some of their impressive farm system depth, knowing they're likely to replenish it in the next few days, anyway. They give up two players who had little chance to be more than fill-ins for them, and while they only get up to three years of an erratic reliever in return, it's pretty obvious what the upside is for Pearson. He could be their closer next year. He could, by reducing even one of his homer or walk rates, be a solid setup man. That has more value, in the modern game, than a fourth outfielder or a fifth infielder, so the team is rolling the dice on the chance at a quick turnaround for Pearson, knowing what they're losing is the very thing of which they already have plenty.

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[Bertz]

Good stuff.  This is exactly the kind of stuff monster you should be giving leverage innings to in the back half of a lost season.

Also, given that the Cubs already have several guys in this mold (though Pearson might be stuff-ier than any of the current ones) snd Jed still decided to go external I am taking this as soft confirmation the bullpen's about to be gutted over the next few days.

[Tryptamine]

I actually quite like this depending on the return. Pearson has very good stuff, he just gives up way too much hard contact.

[Bertz]

Pinango is a non-prospect at this point

 

[Stratos]

Merryweather-type acquisition let's hope.  Obvious upside, maybe some tweaks can lower the HR/9.