We’ve been doing this for several years now. We got through some of the top free agents, use the contract the FanGraphs suggests they will get and ask have a poll asking should we sign him.
Both Keith Law and Ben Clements have Kyle Tucker as the number one free agent this year. He’s been pretty terrific for the past five years, hitting .277/.365/.514 with 134 home runs and 105 stolen bases. He’s had an fWAR in the fours in each of his last five seasons. He’s about league average defensively as a corner
outfielder.
Tucker is a 29-year-old outfielder.
Keith Law said:
Tucker played nearly a full season in 2025 after missing about half of 2024 due to injury, but he didn’t have the kind of full-season breakout year that the Cubs were hoping to get when they traded three players for him last offseason. He actually hit fewer homers this year (22) than he did in his abbreviated 2024 season (23), and all of his Statcast power indicators were down and his ISO was the lowest of his career. He played with a hairline fracture in his right hand for over half of the season, however, and that almost certainly explains his power outage. He suffered the injury on June 1, when he was slugging .524, returned three days later and slugged just .415 the rest of the season. That’s a good reason to bet on a bounceback from him in 2026, as is the fact that he continued to improve his pitch selection, matching the lowest chase rate of his career while swinging more at pitches in the zone.
Ben Clements:
Tucker played nearly a full season in 2025 after missing about half of 2024 due to injury, but he didn’t have the kind of full-season breakout year that the Cubs were hoping to get when they traded three players for him last offseason. He actually hit fewer homers this year (22) than he did in his abbreviated 2024 season (23), and all of his Statcast power indicators were down and his ISO was the lowest of his career. He played with a hairline fracture in his right hand for over half of the season, however, and that almost certainly explains his power outage. He suffered the injury on June 1, when he was slugging .524, returned three days later and slugged just .415 the rest of the season. That’s a good reason to bet on a bounceback from him in 2026, as is the fact that he continued to improve his pitch selection, matching the lowest chase rate of his career while swinging more at pitches in the zone.
Ben Clemens figures he’s likely to get a ten-year, $370 million contract. That seems like a lot of money, and we’d still be paying him in his late 30s, when he and Vlad would both need time at DH.
