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Carlos Triunfel has a long swing, meaning that he wrist-hinges the bat head way around so that it aims back at the pitcher. This of course means that the bat has farther to travel to get into the hitting area. It also means, in theory, that he hits the ball harder than average.
He sinks his weight gracefully down onto the incoming energy and locks his eyes onto it decisively.
His bat launch and throughswing, as well as his arc-y one hand swing plane, are solidly in key with the Alex Rodriguez school of music. His torque, balance, and power are all pretty to watch.
The problem is that, after he winds that bat so menacingly, he then decelerates the bat into the hitting zone. This results in a flat, static, lifeless swing. I mean, you can see it in the "thonk" of the base hit shown in the video, but the Mainframe was left with this impression on every Triunfel swing.
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And why might a 21-year-old* shortstop be indecisive about attacking ML pitches? If you can't connect the dots on that one, we'll refer you to ... well, the Barclays Premier League. While you're trying new sports, you might as well try the most popular one!
Triunfel missed the 2009 season, was effectively 21 in AAA this year, and hit a presentable .260. His EYE was mediocre to crummy, not tragic, but evidencing a heavy rearguard action on Triunfel's part. He did swat 10 homers and 30+ doubles in a huge park.
The reason that fans have wandered off and lost interest in Triunfel is because he's never flashed any upside. It looks to me like, his whole career, he's been doing what Montero did in 2012: he's made blamed sure that he got a lot of contact. On pitches that he doesn't understand.
We don't have any guess when the day will arrive that Carlos Triunfel will start seeing pitches early, and will start accelerating the bat through the strike zone with gusto. It could be when he's 24. It could be when he's 26. It could be next April.
But the kid hit pretty well in AAA at age 21*, and he looks like a shortstop. Jack Zduriencik, as so often, had his own opinion as to which player deserved airtime in late 2012. Don't overlook Zduriencik's own statement on Carlos Triunfel.
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It doesn't look logical to me that his career spike would be imminent. But who knows? Right now the Mariners have Ryan at SS next year, and they have Franklin and Miller both in baseball's top 100 prospects and in the UPPER minors. It's going to be tough to invest three years' worth of AB's in Carlos Triunfel.
Supposing that Triunfel was going to have a Jose Valentin or Rich Aurilia career, starting not in 2013 but in 2014. You can't just crinkle that up and toss it in the wastepaper basket. But how do you shoehorn that into the M's plans?
M's fans have never been exposed to this problem before. There are going to be a lot more legitimate major leaguers come down this pipeline than Jack Zduriencik has time or room for. And it's one of the reasons that you trade quantity Scrub prospects for quality Stars.