The Kyle Tucker trade is probably going to work out very well for the Houston Astros because of Cam Smith, but at the same time, it’s less than I thought they’d get for Tucker, who played like a superstar in half a season in 2024 and was worth 5-plus WAR for three straight years before that.
The Chicago Cubs seemed very happy to build the best team of perfectly cromulent players, with eight position players worth between 2 and 4 bWAR last year, but nobody who was a real star for his position. Tucker is that and more, immediately becoming the Cubs’ best player, and by trading from some surplus the Cubs don’t lose anything from the 2025 roster they can’t replace internally. Tucker was in the midst of his best season as a hitter when he fouled a ball off his shin bone, fracturing it and putting him on the IL for just over three months; his OBP was at a career-high .408, his slugging at a career-high .585, and he was putting the ball in the air more often thanks to a small boost in his average launch angle. He’s one of the best fastball hitters in the game if not the best, ranking in the top three in the game in run value per 100 fastballs as a batter (per Baseball Savant), but he recognizes all pitch types and hits them all pretty well. He hasn’t had a whiff rate against any pitch type over 35 percent in either of the past two years; not even Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge can say that. His defensive metrics have bounced all over the place since he became a full-time right fielder, but he’s probably a 50 to 55 defender in the end with an above-average arm. He was en route to an MVP-level, 8-9 WAR season when he got hurt, and I expect more of the same — and maybe more if the Cubs don’t extend him right away and this is a walk year for him.
Smith, a 6-foot-4, athletic infielder, is the jewel for the Astros here, as the Cubs’ first-round pick in 2024 rolled right into pro ball after a full season at Florida State (hitting .387/.488/.654 in 66 games with just a 15 percent strikeout rate) and then hit .313/.396/.609 across Low A, High A and Double A in 32 more games, again keeping his strikeout rate low (18 percent). Smith remade his body and his swing last offseason and went from kind of a power-over-hit guy who might not stay on the dirt as a 19-year-old high schooler to a pure hitter with looser hands and better bat speed for more frequent and harder contact. He’s only played third base in 2024 between college and the minors and could stay there but is more likely to end up at first or in an outfield corner. There’s a chance this is an elite bat regardless of his position, though, and he immediately becomes the Astros’ best prospect.
Paredes is a solid regular who gets on base at an above-average clip and puts the ball in play a lot but has never really grown into harder contact as many scouts expected when he was in his early 20s. His batted-ball metrics are pretty bad across the board, ranking in the bottom quartile in MLB in Barrel rate and expected average, the bottom 10 percent in hard-hit rate and the bottom 5 percent in average exit velocity. It’s not great bat speed and if anything seemed a little worse in 2024, as he went from hammering four-seamers to being just adequate against them. He’s a fringy but serviceable defender at third. His on-base skills are good enough to make him a valuable regular despite all of these limitations, peaking at 4.2 bWAR/4.3 fWAR in 2023, but there isn’t much upside here and I think he’s going to age extremely poorly. He’s under team control through 2027.
Right-hander Hayden Wesneski has starter potential but has been extremely homer-prone in the majors, giving up 32 homers in 157 innings over the past two seasons, two-thirds of them coming off fastballs. He relies heavily on his sweeper, possibly throwing too many different pitches for others to be effective. While he’s been better in relief in the majors, it’s not a massive difference — 14 points of OBP, 33 points of slugging — and he probably has more value as a back-end starter/swingman than a true reliever.
It’s just one year of Tucker’s services, so his trade value isn’t as high as you might expect for a player of his caliber. Even acknowledging that, this deal feels like one excellent prospect and some guys. I’m not a big Paredes believer going forward; his value seems to be as the potential everyday third baseman if Alex Bregman walks, and I expect some decline from Paredes even over the three years he has left to free agency. Houston may have been more inclined to take a deal that returned two big leaguers and one prospect than two or three prospects and maybe less help for the 2025 roster, as they’re obviously still in contending mode. That might have returned less total value than they could have gotten if they’d gone strictly for youth.
(Top photo of Kyle Tucker: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
