Kyle Tucker made us wait until mid-January just to do the inevitable. Of course, in MLB, that means the star free agent signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Just as Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Yohsinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, and a laundry list of other elite free agents before him have. The back-to-back World Series champions have been consistently assembling their superteam year after year, and now it just got even better with Tucker.
For large portions of the offseason, we heard next to nothing on the Tucker front. Since the turn of the calendar, though, it appeared to be a three-horse race with the Dodgers, the longtime favorite Toronto Blue Jays, and New York Mets all involved in his market. While it had been reported that the Mets and owner Steve Cohen were trying to shoot for a short-term, high-AAV deal for the All-Star outfielder, the Dodgers blew them away with a four-year, $240 million deal that Tucker eventually signed, as FanSided MLB insider Robert Murray reported. The deal also has an opt-out after the second year.
Kyle Tucker just made sure the Dodgers are unilaterally hated
Make no mistake, most baseball fans already had a foul taste in their mouths from the Dodgers. Whether it's the case or not, there has been a perception that they're playing an unfair game with how they've built this team. To put it in perspective, the Dodgers' luxury tax penalties are so substantial because of all of the talent that they've accrued, that Tucker's already astronomical $60 million in average annual value on this deal will actually cost Los Angeles $120 million per season.
Perhaps making the disdain for the Dodgers even worse is the simple fact that their process has worked. When there were first notions that something like this could be coming for LA, they won a World Series in 2020. Then, they kept building. And kept building. And now this is a club that has won back-to-back Fall Classics and was already the betting favorite to win a ring in 2026 before this latest signing.
Now they have another elite bat in the lineup, one who also plays plus defense and helps shore up a marginally weak spot on the roster — if you can even say the Dodgers have one of those at this point.
Tucker has produced at least 4.2 fWAR in each of his last five seasons, even playing just 136 games this past year with the Cubs and, more impressively, just 78 games the year prior in Houston. Over those five seasons, the outfielder has slashed .277/.365/.514/.878 while averaging 32.8 home runs, 206.1 RBI, 25.7 stolen bases and 70.3 total extra-base hits per 162 games. He's been as good as advertised.
Making that more painful for anyone praying on the Dodgers' demise is the fact that LA is getting him on this contract for essentially the remainder of his prime. Tucker will be just 29 years old on Opening Day, meaning that he'll be in the City of Angels only through his age-32 season, meaning that we can reasonably expect him to maintain his elite level of production over that span.
That's the bat that the Dodgers just added, which is maddening to virtually everyone in the other 29 fanbases in MLB. And when you look at the Dodgers' lineup now, it's not hard to see why fans might be perturbed.
Projected Dodgers lineup with Kyle Tucker heading to LA
Dodgers Lineup and Batting Order | Position |
|---|---|
1. Shohei Ohtani | DH |
2. Mookie Betts | SS |
3. Freddie Freeman | 1B |
4. Kyle Tucker | RF |
5. Will Smith | C |
6. Max Muncy | 3B |
7. Teoscar Hernandez | LF |
8. Tommy Edman | 2B |
9. Andy Pages | CF |
I don't even mean this derogatorily, but that's just downright stupid — stupid because of how unbelievably filthy that is. For those keeping track at home, the Dodgers will have three players with a combined six MVP trophies who come to the dish before Tucker, a player they just committed to pay $60 million per year to, is up to bat.
That's also before you start to get into the insane depth of the lineup as well. Tommy Edman would be a top-two-to-five hitter in most MLB lineups, and he's hitting eighth for Los Angeles. Teoscar Hernandez could be a middle-of-the-order power bat for a lot of teams, and he's up just before Edman. It's ludicrous how dangerous this lineup is.
Dodgers haters almost don't even have anything to say at this point other than what LA is doing is bad for baseball. Outside of that, there's no way you can look at this roster — and we've barely talked about the fact that they have a top-three rotation in baseball by almost any measure, if not the best — and not just simply pencil them into another World Series, or at least another appearance in the Fall Classic.
There won't be many fans of baseball who are happy about this, Dodgers fans aside, of course. As for those LA fans, though, they were already living large — now they're just living larger.