Nearly one year later, Cubs’ deal for Kyle Tucker viewed as a ‘success’ by club

With each passing day, last year’s trade for Kyle Tucker increasingly looks like a one-off deal for the Chicago Cubs. It’s not just that the Cubs appear ready to collect an MLB draft pick if (or when) the consensus No. 1 free agent signs with a new team. It’s also how, for now at least, the Cubs have seemingly ruled out the idea of repeating another trade with similar short-term structure and magnitude.

To be clear, that does not mean Jed Hoyer’s front office is completely ignoring the trade market or simply planning to run it back with the same club minus Tucker. Late last week, Chicago agreed to terms on a two-year deal with reliever Phil Maton.

The Cubs are also among the teams showing interest in free agent Ryan Helsley, according to a league source. Helsley, a two-time All-Star reliever, notched 105 saves over his career with the St. Louis Cardinals, though he has also intrigued clubs as a starter.

It’s still only Thanksgiving, and the Cubs are a deliberate organization with a recent history of making offers (Alex Bregman) and doing deals (Cody Bellinger) after the start of spring training. At some point this winter, trading for a starting pitcher under multiple years of club control would not be out of the question.

“We’re not going to rest on our laurels,” Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins said recently. “We’ll be active, for sure, and there’s a lot of different ways to make your team better, for both the present and in the future. That one — the Tucker deal — was one of the quicker ways. You can’t do that year over year and remain healthy as an organization.”

Hawkins addressed this topic during Major League Baseball’s general managers’ meetings in Las Vegas, where the Cubs met with Tucker’s agency, Excel Sports Management, which represents several players on the club’s roster and free-agent radar.

To get Tucker from the Houston Astros for his final season before reaching free agency, the Cubs gave up 14 potential years of club control over outfielder Cam Smith, infielder Isaac Paredes and pitcher Hayden Wesneski.

With Hoyer’s group under pressure to make the playoffs, the Cubs looked at the deal as an opportunity to consolidate WAR around a superstar-level performance.

“We felt like we needed a boost,” Hawkins said to push the club into the postseason. “We felt like, given where we were, that was a great way to go about that. It was obviously aggressive. There was obviously a lot of really good talent that went the other way in that deal. But it helped accomplish — along with a lot of other really good things — a really solid season for the Cubs. From that perspective, it was a success.”

Tucker’s presence and spectacular first half helped Pete Crow-Armstrong blossom into an All-Star, while Seiya Suzuki turned into a more aggressive middle-of-the-order threat. As a plus baserunner who gets on base at a high rate, Tucker added to the team’s athleticism and versatility.

The 28-year-old is a fine defender, though he did not really stand out in right field on a team with six Gold Glove finalists. Injuries, including a fractured hand, factored into a quiet second half. Still, even during an incomplete season, Baseball Reference rated him as a 4.6 WAR player and FanGraphs measured his overall contributions as worth $36 million.

Without Tucker, the Astros won 87 games this season, but they missed the playoffs for the first time since 2016.

Smith, the No. 14 pick in the 2024 draft, had a solid rookie season in Houston, especially considering how fast he was rushed to the majors. The Astros, though, are also talking about how he will have to earn a spot in spring training or start next season in Triple-A.

Benefiting from a Houston ballpark more suited for his swing than Wrigley Field, Paredes put up 20 home runs and an .809 OPS in 2025, though hamstring issues limited him to 102 games. Wesneski threw 32 innings for the Astros before undergoing Tommy John surgery.

All things considered, it’s reasonable to suggest the Cubs and Astros are mostly satisfied with how the Tucker trade turned out. How Smith performs through his early-to-mid-20s could also put that deal in a different context.

“In some ways,” Hawkins said, “if you’re always on one of the particular sides of a deal like that — like the quote-unquote ‘Tucker side’ or the ‘prospect side’ — if you do that over and over and over again, it’s probably not good for your organizational health. It will hurt you in the long run.

“If you’re never, ever taking on risk in terms of giving future talent away, you might miss the chance for some upside seasons. And vice versa — if you’re always just accumulating asset value, you never actually have that come to fruition. I think there’s some balance there.”

Trading for Tarik Skubal would be another way to look at the situation if the Cubs were hellbent on trying to win the 2026 World Series. Coming off a 92-win season and five electric playoff games at Wrigley Field, the Cubs should have the requisite resources and sense of urgency to make a deal for one of the best pitchers on the planet.

The Cubs have two players under contract for 2027, if you include Maton’s pending deal and Dansby Swanson’s long-term commitment. The Cubs placed just one pitcher on Baseball America’s recent rankings of the organization’s 10 best prospects: Jaxon Wiggins, who threw 78 minor-league innings this year. For a multibillion-dollar franchise, making Skubal the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history could be a smart investment.

Whether the Detroit Tigers would actually trade Skubal this winter — or if agent Scott Boras would even entertain a long-term contract extension for the American League’s reigning Cy Young Award winner — is a different story.

This is more of a thought exercise while watching the Tucker situation unfold and wondering when the Cubs would make another all-in trade.

“If you look at some of the teams that have had a ton of success over the last 10 years,” Hawkins said, “it’s because they’ve built up through the draft. They’ve built up through development. They’ve built up through trades of their premier players to get even more talent. They don’t have to do those deals ever.

“Hopefully, we’re at a place where we don’t feel like we need that boost as we continue to build the type of organization that we want to have.”

© 2025 The Athletic Media Company. All Rights Reserved. Distributed by New York Times Licensing.