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5 Chicago Cubs Prospects who could get traded this season
The Chicago Cubs have managed to crack open a contention window that doesn't appear set to close for some time, but these players may not get to see the organization's final form.
The 2024 Chicago Cubs are a good, potentially great baseball team. However, they are not currently exceptionally great and that’s what it’s going to take to get out of the National League this season
(much less win the World Series) so they’ll be looking to make upgrades sooner rather than later.
Anytime a team is looking to upgrade the Major League roster, it is almost always going to come at the cost of young, cost-controlled talent, usually in the minors, that better matches the other team’s contention window.
Luckily for the Cubs, they’re not only loaded at the major league level. They also have more prospects in the recently updated MLB dot com's Top 100 Prospects List than any other club, so there are plenty of players that they could use as trade fodder and still keep a lot of their depth.
There are five prospects on this list that could be a part of a trade package that yields one or two season-altering players for a deep playoff run as well as one bonus player who may have reached the end of his Cubs’ tenure but maintains value to a rebuilding team.
Matt Mervis
1B Triple-A Iowa
Matt Mervis is a difficult player to nail down. He was the Cubs’ 2022 prospect of the year after going undrafted in the COVID-shortened 2020 MLB Draft. He had a great start to his 2023 season at Triple-A Iowa, but then struggled mightily when he made his Major League debut before being demoted again.
This season we saw much of the same. He was named one of the game’s best first base prospects in the off-season and jumped out to a white-hot start at Triple-A Iowa again, but for the second season in a row, when he joined the Major League squad, his bat and, seemingly, his confidence completely disappeared.
Mervis is a perfect example of a change-of-scenery candidate. His defense is serviceable, but a team that is trading for him would be placing a bet on his bat and giving him everyday at-bats in a low-stakes environment.
There will be fans who saw Mervis’s name and didn’t get this far before clicking the “next” button because they’re so sure that he has no value, but there is a track record of guys like him needing a fresh start.
Chris Davis struggled for the Texas Rangers but in his second full season with the Baltimore Orioles he was an All-Star and Anthony Rizzo hit .141/.281/.242 for the San Diego Padres before being traded to the Cubs in 2012.
Matt Mervis still has value to this organization, but the ship may have sailed on that value being in a Cubs uniform.
Alexander Canario
OF Triple-A Iowa
Alexander Canario is a victim of circumstance in this situation. He’s had two cups of coffee with the Major League club, and he’s put together a .282/.333/.538 slash line over 39 at-bats. The strikeouts were obviously too high, with 19 strikeouts amounting to a nearly 50% strikeout rate, but that 137 OPS+ is certainly good enough to grab the attention of other teams.
Canario is not dissimilar from Nelson Velazquez in this scenario who the Cubs traded for Jose Cuas last season only to see him have a solid end of the 2023 season with 14 homers in just 40 games.
Canario had a great minor league slash-line last season across three levels of the minors. He hit .273/.356/.488 and while he’s struggled a bit since returning to Iowa this season there’s plenty of reason to remain excited about his profile.
On a different team or at a different time he might make sense in the Major League outfield. However, the Cubs have Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki all locked up through 2026 and they also have top prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong as well as breakout surprise Mike Tauchman, making it seemingly impossible for him to find playing time at Wrigley Field.
He is different from Mervis in the fact that he has been successful at the Major League level and could slot into either of the corners and potentially even center field if needed. He just turned 24 in May, has defensive versatility and a power/speed combination that could potentially lead to several 20/20 seasons and that’s something plenty of teams would consider to be worth trading for.
James Triantos
2B Double-A Tennessee
James Triantos is probably the least likely player to be traded from this list because the organization has already invested so much in him with the overslot contract they gave him in his draft year.
Prior to this season, Triantos was a contact-oriented second baseman. This season, Triantos has been much less of a one-trick pony and has a slugging percentage almost a hundred points higher than the one that he had last season or the season before and he’s just one homer shy of the four that he hit in 2023 in 50 fewer games.
If Triantos can keep up his .305/.341/.483 slash-line and continue to develop some additional power then he becomes a very valuable potential asset for the future.
However, when you consider that the Cubs have Nico Hoerner and Dansby Swanson locked up long term and have players like Matt Shaw, Jefferson Rojas, the Hernandez brothers, and Fernando Cruz available as higher upside prospects in the system.
If the Cubs were to trade with a team that wants to begin the process of opening their contention window as early as next season then Triantos could be an ideal trade chip to include as he could easily be a Major League contributor as early as Opening Day 2025.
Kevin Alcantara
OF Double-A Tennessee
Kevin Alcantara is going to be the name that hurts the most to put on this list because he is the only player on the list that could become a legitimate five-tool superstar for another team.
Last year, across three different levels he hit .284/.345/.466 with 15 homers and 14 stolen bases in 102 games. This season, he struggled to adjust to Double-A pitching a bit to start the season as he didn’t get his first hit until the 8th game of the season, but since then, he’s turned it around and is batting .241/.287/.380.
Those numbers don’t look exceptional but when you consider that he went 0-for-28 to start the season they look a little better. That’s the kind of player he is. He’s experienced adversity early and often in his career and he’s always been able to battle back from it and that’s a characteristic that GM’s will look for at the trade deadline.
Players like Jackson Holliday are incredible and they dominate at every level, but then they get to the Majors and don’t know how to handle it when they struggle. From all reports on Alcantara that’s not the case. He is the exact same guy if he’s hit two homers in a game as he is if he’s in the middle of a slump.
Alcantara is the kind of player that any team trading away a player at the deadline would want to trade for. He’s enough of a project that you could reasonably stash him away for all of 2025 in the minors if your team was so inclined to keep their contention window closed, but for aggressive teams looking for a five-tool outfielder to start Opening day in either corner, he would make sense there as well.
Brennen Davis
OF Triple-A Iowa
Brennen Davis and Alexander Canario are the same age, but they’re thought of in completely different ways by Cubs fans.
Canario is still only 24 and could potentially contribute to the Major League club as early as this season. Davis is already 24, and the ship seems to have sailed on his ability to help the Cubs at Wrigley.
That’s the way prospect fatigue works. Davis was considered a unanimous top-100 prospect prior to the 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons. He was the 2021 Futures Game MVP.
However, terrible injury luck has derailed his progress and despite cutting down the strikeouts (24) this season and increasing his walks (18), he’s still not seen as a legitimate candidate to help this team moving forward.
The Cubs should look to do the same thing for Davis that we advocated for Mervis and that is to give him a change of scenery. There’s not a chance that the Cubs will receive value equivalent to Davis’ upside, but as we’ve seen over the last several seasons, there’s a greater than zero-percent chance that he never reaches that upside and now is the time to cash in on whatever value remains.
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