KANSAS CITY – Even if you couldn’t see Alex Bregman’s game-tying home run Thursday, it was something special to be in the building for.
“That game, sitting there in the bullpen watching it,” righty reliever Ryan Zeferjahn said, “when Bregman hit that home run, I got chills down my body.”
Zeferjahn was closer than most of the more than 39,000 in attendance, but his view was more than a little blocked, obscured by the constraints of Wrigley Field’s bullpen dungeon.
“You can’t see. You can’t hear much,” Zeferjahn said. “You can hear a little bit. But you’ve got to go outside a few times between innings to get a feel.”
Despite the relievers being walled off from the rest of their teammates during games, there’s plenty of interaction with them at other times, even for the guys who just got here.
Zeferjahn, who was acquired in a trade-deadline deal Monday, has already chatted with Thursday’s hero, Bregman living up to his reputation as a behind-the-scenes aid for his teammates.
“Just seeing the professionalism, and the veteran group, the leadership, picking their brains,” Zeferjahn said. “Facing Bregman a couple times, … [he] was always one of the tough ABs for me. Seeing how he thought about me when I was throwing and working off that, how I can get better, is big for me. … Having that, being able to use that as a resource is very good.
“There’s going to be more [conversations]. … If there’s little things, I told him to come up and let me know and help me, because I’m always going to listen, I’m always going to learn, I’m always going to want to get better. That’s a big thing for me.”
Zeferjahn has gone head-to-head with Bregman three times, with Bregman getting a hit and drawing a walk and Zeferjahn logging a strikeout.
Zeferjahn has only been a Cub for a few days, but he’s already getting a crash course in how this team operates in a pennant race, from Bregman’s behind-the-scenes impact to the electric atmosphere at Wrigley Field. He pitched in two games during the Cubs’ three-game sweep of the Dodgers.
He figures to be a key bullpen option for the Cubs down the stretch and into the postseason.
“That’s why we traded for him,” manager Craig Counsell said. “We traded for him to pitch in those situations. You don’t control who you’re playing or the situation, but it’s what he’s here to do. So he’s in the game. He handled it all well, and I’m sure he had fun doing it.”
Shaw return ‘still weeks away’
Utility man Matt Shaw is only slowly progressing from the hand sprain that’s sidelined him since late June.
“We’re making progress, it’s just slow progress,” Counsell said. “It’s going in the right direction, just a lot more slowly than we would have hoped and [than we] thought. We’ve just got to be a little patient and not push it to a place where it does something negative.
“The [discomfort] of swinging a bat has lasted a lot longer than he thought and we thought. But we’re getting better. He’s swinging a little bit harder every day. We’ve just got to go slow.
“We’re still weeks away. He’s not swinging a bat at full speed. And we’ve missed enough games where there’s a significant rehab stint [necessary before he returns].”
Gausman gets hit
Righty starter Kevin Gausman made his Cubs debut Friday night and had a scary moment in his first inning with his new team, taking a line drive off his leg, near his ankle.
That sparked a visit from the trainer, but after several warm-up throws, Gausman stayed in the game.