Chicago Cubs fans were already at Defcon 1 on Monday evening, as their team got set to take on the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 2 of the NLDS at American Family Field. Win, and snatch home field with a chance to close the series out at Wrigley Field later this week. Lose, and fall into an 0-2 hole that scarce few teams in MLB history have been able to climb out of.
The stakes already felt high enough, is what we're saying. And yet, ESPN's Jesse Rogers decided that what this fan base needed was even more tension. After Rogers posted on X about the Cubs' decision to start Justin Turner over Michael Busch at first base — Craig Counsell's attempt to counter Milwaukee opener Aaron Ashby — a Cubs fan hopped into his replies to ask about the odds of the team successfully re-signing Kyle Tucker in the coming offseason.
At that point, Rogers chose to send all of Chicago into a tailspin: "No," Rogers put it bluntly. "They were never going to. Anyone that said different was wrong." Well okay then.
No. They were never going to. Anyone that said different was wrong.
— Jesse Rogers (@JesseRogersESPN) October 7, 2025
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Have Cubs tapped out of Kyle Tucker sweepstakes before it even begins?
To be clear, we have no idea whether this is a sourced report or simply Rogers' educated opinion based on the team he spends around the team and its executives. This is far more certainty than anyone else has brought to the prospect of Tucker's free agency all year, and it wouldn't be the first time that a reporter got something wrong.
Then again, Rogers is hardly a nobody, and the Chicago market is his primary focus. There are few insiders out there who would be in better position to know how the Cubs felt about Tucker and vice versa, and how his coming free agency might play out. And the fact that he was willing to be this unequivocal about it, in such a public forum, is hard to ignore.
As is the fact that Jed Hoyer is still running this front office, and it's frankly hard to see him shelling out the kind of money that will be required to keep Tucker around. The biggest contract in Cubs history is still the eight-year, $184 million deal handed out to Jason Heyward back in December of 2015, when Hoyer was serving as general manager under then-president Theo Epstein. Tucker figures to come in will above that number, and we just have very little evidence that Hoyer has the stomach for this sort of bidding war.
And yes, Tucker will still command a bidding war. He remains at the very top of the position player market, one once again short on true impact options, and his overall body of work remains very strong despite how mightily he's struggled down the stretch for Chicago. He likely won't match the $500 million that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. got from the Blue Jays back in the spring — Tucker is two years older, and Vladdy had Toronto over a barrel as he approached free agency — but something around $400 million hardly seems far-fetched given the deals we've seen given out to guys like Bryce Harper and Corey Seager in recent years.
The Cubs could afford that, of course. But it's simply never been Hoyer's style, and the Ricketts operate on a budget that likely doesn't have room for that sort of outlay will still addressing the other needs on this roster moving forward. And all of that doesn't even address whether Tucker actually wants to stay in Chicago long term, which feels very much like an open question at this point.
There's plenty of circumstantial evidence to support Rogers' assertion. But it's still jarring to see it stated this plainly, at this point in the season. And if the Cubs really don't have any interest in making a run at Tucker, Chicago has bigger problems to worry about.