HOUSTON — The last time Kyle Tucker took right field at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park), the Astros were wavering in an ill-fated wild-card series against the Tigers. Two months later, the team he’d spent his entire career with would trade him to the Cubs in a blockbuster deal.
On Friday, Tucker returned to the ballpark he had called home for seven seasons, three All-Star nods and one World Series title. He opened a three-game series with his new team against his former squad. Astros fans in the right-field stands wore golden crowns to welcome back “King Tuck.”
“There’s a lot of really good memories here,” Tucker said from the visitors’ dugout before the game. “And we had a lot of success playing in this city and on this field. So it’s cool.”
Those highlights played out on the giant video board over the right-field stands before the game as Tucker and veteran reliever Ryan Pressly, who also made his Houston return, watched their combined tribute video from the dugout steps.
Their time in Houston was almost perfectly synced. Tucker debuted on July 7, 2018, and the Astros traded for Pressly less than two weeks later.
Pressly remembers seeing Tucker’s unorthodox swing and wondering, “How is he going to do it?”
“And then he just kept hitting,” Pressly told the Sun-Times. “And he kept hitting more and more, and then he started getting a lot stronger and then, believe it or not, he just started hitting homers. Before you knew it, he was a three-time All-Star, Gold Glove. He’s really turned into, obviously, one of the best players in baseball.”
So when the Cubs saw an opportunity to bring in that player — one who could actually upgrade their offense in a critical year for an organization trying to shake a four-year playoff drought — they came to terms with the large return needed to acquire him.
They parted with 2024 first-round draft pick Cam Smith, young pitcher Hayden Wesneski and experienced third baseman Isaac Paredes.
Smith made the Astros’ Opening Day roster and had a .744 OPS entering Friday. Wesneski made six starts for Houston before undergoing season-ending Tommy John surgery. Paredes has been the team’s every-day third baseman, filling the hole left by Alex Bregman’s departure in free agency, and was hitting .271 going into the series.
On the other side, Tucker is on pace to secure his fourth All-Star selection. He has the third-highest fWAR (3.6) of any National League hitter and the second-highest OPS (.922) of any NL outfielder.
“He’s been exactly what we hoped,” manager Craig Counsell said. “And that’s hard to do. It’s also felt like he’s had an impact on the rest of the group, for sure. And he’s just helped take pressure off the rest of the group, frankly, and that’s a big deal.”
The next question is whether the Cubs will be able to keep him. Tucker is set to hit free agency this offseason, barring an extension. But with Tucker drawing comparisons to Juan Soto, it’ll take a hefty financial commitment.
Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer has stuck to his policy of keeping any extension talks internal. And Tucker has taken a similar approach.
“For the most part, we’re just going to keep that between us,” Tucker said this week. “If anything happens, I’m sure you guys would know.”
He did, however, acknowledge that experiencing a new organization for the first time “opens up your eyes” to how different teams operate.
“For the most part, I’m just worried about this team, the Cubs, this year,” Tucker said, “and trying to get better with everyone here.”
That kind of contract speculation — and the pressure of a walk year — has fazed plenty of players. But not Tucker, apparently.
“He doesn’t let stuff that’s meaningless to him enter his brain,” Counsell said. “That’s just how he works. It’s one of the reasons why he’s a great athlete. It’s a strength on the mental performance side of it. . . . And it’s not just about the contract. It’s about everything.
“It’s about how he takes his at-bats, if he gets a bad call, if he’s maybe in a little slump, everything. He’s just really good at keeping the main thing, the main thing: that’s getting a good pitch to hit and doing something with it.”