Cubs to acquire Aroldis Chapman

The Cubs have struck a deal with the Yankees to acquire Aroldis Chapman, Jon Heyman tweets. They gave up a lot, sacrificing top prospect Gleyber Torres as well as reliever Adam Warren, outfield prospect Billy McKinney and probably one other player.

So there you have it -- another reason to fear the Cubs, who the Pirates will play seven times down the stretch. The fact that Torres looks like the key to this deal is especially annoying -- as I noted last month, the only reason the Cubs had him in their system in the first place was that the Cubs went nuts on the Latin American amateur market in 2013, going way over their bonus pool to sign a number of top talents, including Torres. A number of teams have since followed in their footsteps, essentially ensuring that, each year, most of the top international amateur talents head to just two or three teams. (The Pirates have, of course, never been one of those teams.) Now, the Cubs, who already led the division by 7.5 games, get two months of a dominant reliever as a reward.

Perhaps there's a more positive way to look at this, though -- the Cubs are paying a lot more to acquire Chapman now than the Yankees gave the Reds to get him this offseason, so the net result is that talent has left the NL Central. It seems Chapman's domestic violence incident had no negative impact on his market this time, as compared to last offseason.