The Chicago Cubs made the gutsiest trade of last offseason, acquiring Kyle Tucker from the Houston Astros in exchange for All-Star third baseman Isaac Paredes, top prospect Cam Smith and more. Houston missed the playoffs. Chicago made it to the NLDS, but fell short against the Milwaukee Brewers of all teams.
Now things get spicy. Tucker enjoyed his first season in Chicago, but will it be his only season on the North Side? The 27-year-old put up an .841 OPS and 143 OPS+ with 22 home runs, 73 RBI and 25 stolen bases in 500 at-bats. He dealt with a midseason shoulder injury, which resulted in a prolonged slump after the All-Star break, but Tucker was — on balance — one of the best outfielders in MLB, right on par with expectations.
The Cubs undoubtedly want Tucker back. You don't give up the assets that Chicago did without some level of confidence in your ability to re-sign him. But Tucker could command upwards of $400 million, which is drastically more than this Cubs front office is traditionally comfortable paying under Jed Hoyer. Chicago's owner, Tom Ricketts, is a businessman through and through. That means he craves profit, and few teams are better as maximizing profit, often at the expense of the on-field product, than Chicago.
If the Cubs don't re-sign Tucker, several teams will make their play. Among those interested in the four-time All-Star, according to Jon Heyman of the New York Post, are the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Of course it's the Dodgers. Los Angeles has spared no expense in recent years as they build a juggernaut around Shohei Ohtani. But what if we are jumping the gun a bit by assuming the Dodgers would actually meet the price threshold to sign Tucker?
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Don't treat the Dodgers as shoo-ins to sign Kyle Tucker
Spotrac puts Tucker's market value at 10 years, $401.8 million, which is roughly $40.2 million annually. There are workarounds, of course. Deferred money (a Dodgers staple). A longer contract at a lower annual value. But at the end of the day, Tucker is about to receive a massive bag. The Dodgers are more than capable of dropping it. We should all mentally prepare for that outcome, just in case. We cannot ignore the Dodgers as a possibility.
That said... the Dodgers also should not be viewed as overwhelming favorites, like there isn't even a chance for other teams to compete for Tucker's services. The Mets have deeper pockets. The Phillies need an outfielder and don't tend to shy away from free agent bidding wars when it counts. The Cubs are the incumbent, under severe pressure to keep Tucker around. The Yankees are never far from the fray and just lost Juan Soto in the outfield a year ago. Other teams will give the Dodgers a run for their money.
It's also fair to wonder just how serious the Dodgers are about the whole Kyle Tucker thing. $400 million is a lot of cash. A lot. And while the Dodgers are clearly not opposed to significant expenses (see: Ohtani's $700 million bag), there comes a time when all these massive contracts begin to yield diminishing returns.
The Dodgers need to take the longview. Ohtani, Betts and Freeman are all signed into their late 30s. In fact, so is Will Smith. And Blake Snell. And Yoshinobu Yamamoto. And Tommy Edman. Some of those contracts are less burdensome than others, but we can all but guarantee most of them will age poorly. What wins a lot of games now will eventually turn into a mass of overpaid, past-prime veterans weighing down the cap sheet.
Los Angeles has smartly deferred a lot of payments and taken steps to avoid too much annual strain, but that just means the Dodgers will be stuck paying Ohtani significant money years after his retirement. Maybe civilization collapses by 2040 and it's silly to even think that far into the future, but the Dodgers have built themselves a gilded cage of sorts.
Adding Tucker to the ledger would make the Dodgers virtually unbeatable. There's an increasingly real chance the Dodgers are about to become back-to-back World Series champs, showing no signs of decline. If Tucker comes in and delivers two, three, four, five rings and anchors the greatest dynasty in MLB history next to Ohtani, that is worth its weight in gold. But one wonders if L.A. can't win all those chips with a more palatable contract in Tucker's place. This is already a superteam. The Dodgers are already leagues ahead of the competition at full strength. Injuries are always a threat. The bullpen is a weak point. But all in all, the Dodgers do not need Tucker. He would be a luxury. The cherry on top of a ghastly, overpriced sundae. Not the missing piece to a championship roster, as he would be almost anywhere else.
Again, the Dodgers could very well throw caution to the wind and pile on to the rest of MLB with a Tucker signing. It's totally plausible, and Tucker would surely be into the idea of adding to his trophy case at home with another World Series ring (or several). But just don't be shocked if the Dodgers bow out once the bidding reaches a certain point, not unlike they did with Juan Soto last winter.