Cubs Winter Top Prospects Rankings: #11 James Triantos

Triantos scares me more than any of our other prospects.  Easily the likely outcome is something like Adam Frazier with crappier defense at 2B.  That's fine, and even if a bit disappointing would make a quality bench piece.  But we already have Nico Hoerner starting st 2B, we have Nick Madrigal on the bench, and Matt Shaw a bit ahead of Triantos developmentally.  3 RHH contact bats with better infield chops standing between Triantos and MLB plate appearances.  Since James is a fringe Top 100 guy, we should cash that in right now, right?

But there's just enough Alex Bregman in there to make me nervous.  Bregman was only ever a superstar because of the rabbit ball, but even since he's been a guy running a ~125 wRC+ with a 1:1 K/BB ratio.  Those guys are rare in today's game.  There's usually like a dozen hitters with even-ish K/BB ratios a year, with a couple of those being crappy slap hitters (Tony Kemp this year), and a couple others being sluggers who get pitched around constantly (e.g. Soto and Acuna).  If it turns out we had one of those on hand and then dumped him I'm going to be so disappointed.

17 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Triantos scares me more than any of our other prospects.  Easily the likely outcome is something like Adam Frazier with crappier defense at 2B.  That's fine, and even if a bit disappointing would make a quality bench piece.  But we already have Nico Hoerner starting st 2B, we have Nick Madrigal on the bench, and Matt Shaw a bit ahead of Triantos developmentally.  3 RHH contact bats with better infield chops standing between Triantos and MLB plate appearances.  Since James is a fringe Top 100 guy, we should cash that in right now, right?

But there's just enough Alex Bregman in there to make me nervous.  Bregman was only ever a superstar because of the rabbit ball, but even since he's been a guy running a ~125 wRC+ with a 1:1 K/BB ratio.  Those guys are rare in today's game.  There's usually like a dozen hitters with even-ish K/BB ratios a year, with a couple of those being crappy slap hitters (Tony Kemp this year), and a couple others being sluggers who get pitched around constantly (e.g. Soto and Acuna).  If it turns out we had one of those on hand and then dumped him I'm going to be so disappointed.

 

Yeah, I'm probably pretty fine with moving James for the reasons above. There's an outcome where Triantos becomes an Alex Bregman, but I'm okay with letting another team take that gamble. To get there, you've got to get him to likely change his swing path a bit, change his approach at the plate significantly from "all contact-all-the-time" to "it's okay to strikeout if you hit more home runs". That's not a natural thing to do, and K/BB rates are the things that usually stick with players. There's also a worry about high-contact-rate guys like what we saw with Frank Schwindel; Schwindel made contact with most everything, but pitchers knew this too and they used it against him to induce weak contact. 

If you can get a team to buy into Triantos as a Bregman, that's an awesome outcome in a trade for a former 2nd round pick.

Triantos is a weird case for me.  I made a Chase Strumpf comp back when we were doing the prospect lists, but his AFL stint has made it clear the hit tool should be able to play up at higher levels and even in the majors and that he *should* have 10-15 HR power if he ends up as a ML regular.  That's obviously better than what Strumpf has done so far.

However, I struggle to see the path forward for Triantos on this team so long as his power and eventual position are both in question.  If he can tap into 20+ HR power without sacrificing too much of the hit tool, then I'd be willing to swallow average defense at 2B/3B, but this team has shown a very strong preference in favor of high quality defense in recent years.  I wouldn't be surprised to see him traded this offseason as a result.

Comparing Triantos to Bregman bugs my brain. If the bottom line is he can be traded because what he does has appeal to teams, great and sure fair. Other teams aren’t easily impressed teens who just found out prospects exist but rather entities of Business and Data (two of the most powerful forces on Earth). If they’re willing to hear Bregman comps its going to be so they can pass it onto the press for PR. At this point I’d say part of why we’re getting a more NFL version of MLB is teams can tell a Bregman from a Triantos without too much effort while fans will argue that the cap space taken up and ages basically covers gaps in performance. This isn’t to say that Triantos has no value, plenty even, but the Cubs can’t engage teams looking to like pull some wool over their eyes or something. Very little need to BS other teams when most motivation for trades is cap space, just hit them with: this guy is cheaper, under more powerful control too and a little younger, than who you’re trading and that’s what Value is