POWER ARM: Cubs Acquire Ryan Zeferjahn in Trade with Angels

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Mere minutes after securing a controllable starter who's a bit of a project, the Cubs have snapped up a reliever to give them a more formidable bullpen for a push toward the playoffs, a source confirmed to North Side Baseball. Jeff Passan of ESPN broke the news on Twitter.

Zeferjahn, who headlined my piece this morning about names to watch as the day unfolds, has a high-octane heater and bat-missing stuff across the board. He's been too wild to dominate the way his raw stuff would have otherwise allowed for most of his career, but he seemed to turn the corner recently, which brought him to the top of many teams' wish lists as they shopped for controllable relievers at the deadline.

The Cubs expect to have Daniel Palencia resume his place at the back end of the bullpen soon, but Zeferjahn slots into their suite of high-leverage options right away. He, Jacob Webb and Palencia give the team three right-handed relievers who miss bats, and increases the depth of Craig Counsell's options box.

In return for Zeferjahn, the Cubs will send catcher/designated hitter Moisés Ballesteros and pitching prospect Mason McGwire to the Halos, according to Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register.

That will sound like too dear a price to some, but after Ballesteros proved himself unable to catch in the majors and struggled to adjust at the plate in his first prolonged exposure to big-league pitching, the team began to value him a bit less highly. Packaging Ballesteros and McGwire to snare a potentially elite reliever is risky but intriguing, and it underscores their desire not to give up Owen Ayers, a similar prospect to Ballesteros in some ways on whom the Angels repeatedly insisted when Chicago tried to obtain Detmers.

Under team control through 2030, Zeferjahn has a chance to be the high-impact addition of this deadline for Chicago. All five of his pitches rate as better than average, some by huge margins, according to Baseball Prospectus's StuffPro.

That arsenal, combined with his surge in effectiveness recently, is why Zeferjahn was an expensive acquisition. It's also how the Cubs could end up with the kind of high-powered relief corps that takes a team far in October. Giving up Ballesteros and McGwire stings a bit, but the Cubs believe they paid that price for access to a higher possible tier of achievement come the postseason.