I think it’s reasonable to say that most Cubs fans are excited about Friday’s trade that brought Kyle Tucker to the Cubs. Even if Tucker does leave via free agency after one season, the addition of a hitter of his caliber gives the Cubs an excellent chance to win the NL Central and perhaps make a postseason run.
Here are three things that occurred to me about this deal and I wanted to share them with you this morning.
The first round of the 2015 MLB Draft has been very productive for the Cubs
With the addition of Tucker, the Cubs now have three players on their 40-man roster who were chosen in the first round of the 2015 draft. Dansby Swanson was the No. 1 overall pick that year, Tucker was chosen fifth, and Ian Happ was the eighth overall pick in the first round.
Beyond that, Phil Bickford, who was chosen 18th overall in that first round by the Giants, will be in Cubs camp next spring as a non-roster invitee. Bickford has had some decent years as a MLB reliever (don’t look at his 2024 season though, yikes) and could be in the bullpen mix for 2025.
Players from other rounds of the 2015 Draft who have played for the Cubs include Scott Effross and P.J. Higgins. Effross is indirectly involved in this trade because he was sent to the Yankees for Hayden Wesneski, who was included in the Tucker deal.
The Cubs haven’t made a trade for a player this good in more than 20 years
It’s rare for a player of Tucker’s caliber to be traded at all, much less wind up on the North Side of Chicago.
The last player of anywhere close to this quality acquired by the Cubs by trade was Nomar Garciaparra, who the Cubs acquired from the Red Sox in a deadline deal in 2004.
At the time of the deal, Nomar had posted five seasons of 6 bWAR or better, though the injury bug that eventually ruined his career had already begun to bite. He missed most of the 2001 season with injuries, though he came back and posted 6+ bWAR seasons in both 2002 and 2003, batting .301/.345/.524 with 28 home runs, 13 triples and 120 runs scored in ‘03.
Nomar was also injured in 2004 and had played in just 38 games for the Red Sox at the time of the deal. In 43 games for the Cubs he hit .297/.364/.455 and posted 1.3 bWAR. Then he got off to a terrible start in 2005 and suffered a severe groin injury that cost him half the season. He left the Cubs after 2005 as a free agent and played four years with the Dodgers. I believe Nomar had Hall of Fame talent, but his career was ruined by all the injuries.
Perhaps the only other player of this caliber that the Cubs have acquired by trade in the last several decades is Ralph Kiner, who the Cubs got in a deal with the Pirates in June 1953. Kiner had led the NL in home runs seven years in a row from 1946-52 and had five Top-10 MVP finishes in that span. He averaged 6.0 bWAR in those seven seasons.
More details on the Kiner trade are here.
Kiner was 30 at the time of the deal. He had two decent years for the Cubs, though nothing close to what he’d done in Pittsburgh.
Let’s hope Kyle Tucker is better than this for the Cubs. It does show, however, how unusual it is to be able to acquire a player like this by trade in the prime of his career. Tucker will turn 28 in January.
Tucker’s numbers from his half season in 2024 hint at a Cubs season in 2025 that could be one of the franchise’s best ever.
Kyle Tucker’s last 162 games:.291/.396/.587120 Runs35 Doubles43 HR120 RBI
27 SB
— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) December 13, 2024
Those numbers are utterly ridiculous and if Tucker did anything like that in 2025, we’d all be thrilled.
Obviously, no one plays all 162 games anymore; Tucker’s played 150 or more games twice in his career. But even pro-rating those numbers to 150 games gives a great season.
Tucker posted 4.7 bWAR in 2024, losing half his year to a right shin fracture. He played in 78 games, batting .289/.408/.585 with 23 home runs and 11 stolen bases. He might have been a candidate for AL MVP if he hadn’t been injured. This hints at a possible 9+ bWAR season in 2025, if Tucker is healthy. He did come back and play in September 2024 for Houston and showed no signs the injury was still affecting him.
There have been just five seasons in all of Cubs franchise history of 9+ bWAR by a position player. Here are those seasons. (I posted these in the comments to the trade article yesterday, but with several hundred comments there, you might have missed them. If not, enjoy them again!)
- Rogers Hornsby, 1929: .380/.459/.679, 156 runs, 39 HR, 149 RBI, 10.6 bWAR, MVP
- Ernie Banks, 1958: .313/.366/.614, 119 runs, 47 HR, 129 RBI, 9.3 bWAR, MVP
- Ernie Banks, 1959: .304/.374/.596, 97 runs, 45 HR, 143 RBI, 10.2 bWAR, MVP
- Ron Santo, 1967: .300/.395/.512, 107 runs, 31 HR, 96 RBI, 9.8 bWAR
- Sammy Sosa, 2001: .328/.437/.737, 146 runs, 64 HR, 160 RBI, 10.3 bWAR
(Santo finished fourth in MVP voting in 1967 and Sosa second in 2001. Back in the 1960s, it was considered important by voters to play for pennant winners. Orlando Cepeda was named MVP, even though Santo had a better year by almost all measures.)
All of those are great, all-time seasons in franchise history and among the best seasons in MLB history. There have been 144 position player seasons of 9 bWAR or better, most recently four of them in 2024: Aaron Judge (10.8), Bobby Witt Jr. (9.4), Shohei Ohtani (9.2) and Gunnar Henderson (9.1).
If Kyle Tucker can come even close to that in 2025, the Cubs ought to be a serious postseason contender.
