November 10th, 2025: Tucker, Murakami, Minor League Free Agents

On this date 19 years ago, the Yankees traded Gary Sheffield to the Tigers for three pitching prospects who combined to give up 12 runs 5.2 innings with the Yankees. Picking up Bobby Abreu at the deadline that summer led to the Sheffield trade. It was a perfectly logical and understandable trade. It just didn’t work out. So it goes. I’m gonna use today’s intro to pass along a few updates and reminders:

• Offseason Plan: It's a go for Friday. It’s written. I just need to read back through it (during which I will still miss some typos, sorry in advance) and transfer it over from Google Docs into Patreon, which is more painstaking than it sounds because of formatting issues. 

• Thursday: Friday’s regular post will run Thursday instead. I can’t promise it will be lengthy with the Offseason Plan coming, but it’ll include mailbag questions. 

• GM Meetings: They’re this week. AL GMs will speak Wednesday, so get ready for another round of “Brian Cashman says nothing despite saying a lot of words.” He’s perfected it. 

• Awards week: That’s also this week. Thursday night is when we’ll find out if Aaron Judge is a three-time AL MVP or a two-time AL MVP runner-up.

One last thing: I’m planning to skip the regularly scheduled post on Friday, Nov. 28th. That is two weeks from this Friday and it is the Friday after Thanksgiving. If there’s breaking news, I’ll be all over it, otherwise I’m gonna take it easy during the holiday weekend. Thanks for reading everyone. Here now is Tuesday's post on Monday because I have it written, and I see no reason to hold it another day.

1. Scouting the Free Agent Market: Kyle Tucker. On this date last year, we all knew Kyle Tucker would be available as a free agent this offseason. What we didn’t know was Tucker would be available in a trade last offseason. Once he became available, the Yankees got involved, though they turned down Houston’s ask of Luis Gil and George Lombard Jr. Tucker went to the Cubs and the Yankees pivoted to Cody Bellinger.

“(We had) many conversations,” Brian Cashman told Bryan Hoch about the Tucker pursuit. "At the end of the day, I'm glad that Mr. Tucker is not in the American League. It's a big get for the Cubs."

It all worked out pretty well. I can’t complain. The Cubs salary dumped Bellinger on the Yankees after getting Tucker and Bellinger was great in 2025. The Yankees also got to keep Gil and Lombard. Was Tucker the missing piece in 2025? I don’t think so, as much as I would have liked to have him. Regardless, Tucker is a free agent now. The Yankees get to try again.

Here are the top available free agents according to 2026 FanGraphs projections:

1. OF Kyle Tucker: +4.4 WAR
2. SS Bo Bichette: +4.0 WAR
3. 3B Alex Bregman: +3.9 WAR
4. RHP Dylan Cease: +3.8 WAR
5. LHP Framber Valdez: +3.7 WAR

Tucker, 29 in January, is young enough that he should have several peak years remaining, and his peak aligns perfectly with whatever’s left of Aaron Judge’s peak. We’ll get into it more in a second, but Tucker has the kinda offensive skill set that tends to age well. At some point the Yankees will have to figure out what the post-peak Judge offense looks like. Tucker would be a big help there.

The Yankees can be a bit weird about the Astros’ sign-stealing thing but Tucker didn't play much for those 2017-19 Astros teams, plus they tried to trade for him last year. We know they want him. Not at any cost, but they want him, and they consider him a good fit for their lineup and their ballpark. It stands to reason then that’ll circle back this offseason. Let’s dig into Tucker’s game now.

Background

A Tampa native, Tucker was Pete Alonso’s teammate at Plant High School about a mile south of George M. Steinbrenner Field. He was a top prospect going into the 2015 draft and the Astros selected him with the No. 5 pick. Tucker was a consensus top 20-ish prospect in baseball from 2017-2019. He made his MLB debut in 2018 and played his first season as a regular in 2020, and received MVP votes every year from 2021-23. Tucker has been an All-Star the last four years, including 2025, his lone (so far) season with the Cubs.

At the plate

144 hitters had at least 2,000 plate appearances from 2021-25. Among those 144, Tucker ranked 23rd in AVG (.277), 10th in OBP (.365), 8th in SLG (.514), 8th in wRC+ (143), 23rd in homers (134), 13th in walk rate (12.0%), and 16th in strikeout rate (15.0%). That’s the 16th lowest strikeout rate. Over the last five years Tucker has been a top 10 hitter in baseball. This is simply tremendous performance:

The wrong lesson to take from the 2025 Blue Jays is that you need to strike out less. Everyone wants to strike out less (duh), but the Blue Jays got to within two outs of a World Series championship because they didn’t strike out and they hit for power. They slugged .471 as a team in October. They hit 28 home runs in 18 games, the fourth most home runs any team has ever hit a single postseason.

You can win with a contact heavy offense and you can win with a power heavy offense, but it’s difficult. The best teams do both, get the bat on the ball and hit for power (like the 2025 Blue Jays), and Tucker does both. Good power, good contact, good eye. He doesn’t do any of those things at a Juan Soto level, but he is very good at all of them, and power and plate discipline are skills that age well. Tucker’s one of the most complete hitters in the sport. Let’s dig a little further into his offensive game now.

He’s platoon neutral. The Astros have done well for themselves, so who am I to criticize, but they didn’t hit Tucker and Yordan Alvarez back-to-back enough. They’re both lefties who hit lefties well. If the other team wants to bring in a lefty reliever who is not as good as their best available righty reliever, let them. The Astros always squeezed a righty or two between Tucker and Alvarez instead of stacking them. Eh, whatever.

Tucker’s been so good against lefties the last three years that you can barely tell his platoon splits apart. Guess which is which:

• Pitchers A: .277/.387/.513 (148 wRC+) with 14.7 K% and 15.1 BB%

• Pitchers B: .278/.380/.511 (147 wRC+) with 14.5 K% and 13.9 BB%

The strikeout and walk rates might give it away. Pitchers A are righties and pitchers B are lefties. This is not a hitter whose effectiveness will diminish when you face a lefty starter, when the opponent brings a lefty out of the bullpen, whatever. Here are the best left-on-left hitters since 2023 (min. 300 PA):

1. Yordan Alvarez: 172 wRC+
2. Cody Bellinger: 151 wRC+
3. Kyle Tucker: 144 wRC+
4. Juan Soto: 142 wRC+
4. Shohei Ohtani: 142 wRC+

I say again: The Astros really should have hit Alvarez and Tucker back-to-back more often and baited the opposing manager into using an inferior lefty over his top righty. Aaron Boone definitely would have fallen for it.

Anyway, at some point Tucker’s performance against lefties will slip. Platoon issues become real for almost every aging hitter, but, right now, he has no split. You can keep him in the lineup and in the same lineup spot every single game. No need to tweak things based on the starting pitcher’s handedness.

He hammers fastballs. And hangs in well against everything else. According to Statcast’s run values, Tucker has been a great fastball hitter throughout his career, one of the very best in the game, and he’s also handled non-fastballs well. Here are the numbers:

If you’re +10 runs against a pitch type, that’s great. +15 runs is incredible and +20 runs is godly. The only hitters who are several runs in the positives against all pitch groups in a given year are the best hitters in baseball. Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, José Ramírez, Juan Soto, guys like that. And Kyle Tucker too. He’s been in the positives against all three pitch groups the last two years and three times in the last five years, and his worst performance against a pitch group was 0 runs, or bang-on average.

Also, going from +24 runs to +19 runs to +13 runs against fastballs the last three years may seem like a decline, but it’s not really. Tucker missed time with injury in 2024, and he was +18 runs against fastballs in April, May, and June in 2025. It was -4 runs the rest of the way, when he played with a broken hand (more on that in a bit). Basically, Tucker hits everything. He crushes hard stuff and more than holds his old against soft stuff.

He’ll love Yankee Stadium. Tucker is a lefty hitter who pulls the ball a lot. In the air, on the ground, whatever, but especially in the air. He’s ranked near the top of the league in pulled fly ball rate just about every year since becoming a regular:

Tucker’s pulled fly ball rate was almost identical to Bellinger’s this season (24.7%) and he’s mostly been north of Bellinger the last few years, and we saw how much Cody loved Yankee Stadium. I don’t want to pick on Bellinger here because he was awesome, but he needed the short porch to get to 29 homers this year, his highest total since 2019. Tucker’s had 30-homer seasons without the short porch. Does he get to 35 homers playing 81 games in the Bronx? 40? Only one way to find out.

He’s a candidate for the “just swing harder” approach. I mentioned bat speed training a few weeks ago and how the Yankees appear to be all-in on it. The Blue Jays rode bat speed increases to their great offense this year. They ranked sixth in K% (i.e. sixth lowest) and 20th in SLG in 2024, then boosted that to 1st in K% and 7th in SLG in 2025 with largely the same group of players thanks to increased bat speed.

Anecdotally, increasing bat speed seems to work best with hitters who have high contact rates and good approaches. The guys who know what pitches to swing at and get the bat on the ball. They can trade a little contact for bat speed/power. Tucker fits the mold.

It’s average bat speed with excellent chase and whiff rates. Tucker is starting from a very high baseline in terms of knowing which pitches to swing at and getting the bat on the ball. Every +1 mph in bat speed equals about +1.2 mph in exit velocity. If you can take Tucker from 72.0 mph average bat speed into the 74.0 mph range (i.e. top 50 in baseball), then boy, he could really be something.

(Here's an explainer on squared up rate, if you're wondering. I don't understand it either.)

Tinkering with the swing of one of the best hitters in the game is kinda scary. Why mess with something that isn’t broken, right? That isn’t the way teams approach this though. They look for every advantage, every little gain that can be made, and there are gains to be made with Tucker’s bat speed. It’s the kinda thing that can make him more productive now and ease his decline once he gets into his 30s.

The TLDR version: Tucker is an excellent hitter with Yankee Stadium friendly lefty pull power, excellent contact skills, and strong pitch recognition/plate discipline. He hits all pitch types well and doesn’t need a platoon partner. It’s fair to say Tucker is a notch below the game’s truly elite hitters (Judge, Ohtani, Soto, etc.). That just means he’s a great hitter rather than a historic hitter.

Baserunning

Three times in the last four years Tucker has stolen 25 bases, and in those four years he is 91-for-103 (88%) stealing bases. It’s volume and efficiency. Despite that, Tucker is not fast. It’s below-average sprint speeds and home-to-first times four years running now (below average but not awful). That doesn’t show up in the steals but it shows up in Tucker’s extra-base taken rate, which has been a bit south of the 40% league average the last two years.

Tucker is not fast nor is he particularly impactful at the non-stolen base parts of baserunning, but the man knows how to steal a base. He steals all those bases by knowing the pitcher/catcher, picking his spots, and also with technique (a few years ago current Cubs coach Jerry Weinstein highlighted how efficiently Tucker gets moving). He’s not fast. He’s just great at everything else that makes a successful basestealer.

“I just feel like I get good jumps and pick the right times to go,” Tucker told Matt Kawahara about stealing bases in 2024. “There’s plenty of guys who are probably faster than me in the league, but they might not feel as comfortable stealing bases or not get as good of jumps as they probably could. Which might be like choosing certain times to go that you feel the most comfortable and whatnot.

“It kind of just depends on the pitcher, really. If he’s slow to the plate and I know I can get a good jump, then I can take off, and I feel comfortable doing that. But if he’s quick to the plate or he’s slide-stepping the whole time, (if) there’s a combination of that and a good catcher with a good arm behind the plate, I might want to not take that chance in that certain scenario.”

Stealing bases is a young player's skill. Tucker is already slow and he’ll only slow down more as he gets into his 30s, so the stolen bases will dry up. Maybe soon. Paul Goldschmidt was very similar as a not fast but steals a lot of bases guy early in his career. He went from 32 steals at age 28 to 18 at 29 to seven at 30. Tucker has rated as an above-average baserunner throughout his career because of the steals. Once those go away, he doesn’t figure to help his team much with his legs.

Defense

Positionally, Tucker is not a great fit. He’s been a right fielder most of his career and a good one at that. The Yankees have a right fielder though, and with Aaron Judge entering his mid-30s, they’re not going to ask him to play center field again or to learn left field. Tucker would have to move to left, a position he’s played in the past but not lately. (Tucker has 29 career innings in center. That’s a no go).

Here are Tucker’s defensive numbers the last few years. This is all right field:

• 2021: +6 DRS and +2 OAA

• 2022: +15 DRS and +5 OAA

• 2023: +2 DRS and -5 OAA

• 2024: +7 DRS and +2 OAA

• 2025: -1 DRS and -2 OAA

Tucker’s worst defensive season in the last five years was roughly league average, and that was with a new team in a new home ballpark, one known for the wind playing tricks on the ball. Not even consistently either. One day the wind blows in at Wrigley Field, the next blows out, etc. Tucker was at -2 OAA in April and +0 the rest of the season. Maybe that means he just needed a month to get comfortable in his new home stadium?

Statcast’s OAA components tell us Tucker has an above-average arm and that he’s at his worst when he has to go to his right to catch a ball.

Tucker is a right-handed thrower and him having the most trouble when he moves to his right means he has problems when he has to reach across his body to make the catch on the move. That’s common. It’s not universal, but OAA’s components tell us lots of outfielders are at their worst defensively when they have to reach across their body and can't easily play the ball off to their side. You can understand why that's the case.

Assuming Tucker plays left field for the Yankees, this means his bad side (moving to his right) is toward the foul line, which can be good and bad. It’s good because some of balls he can’t get in that direction will fall foul. Maybe it should have been an out and the at-bat continues, but at least it’s not a hit. It’s also bad because there’s no help in that direction. The center fielder can’t back you up. If a ball falls in and gets by you, you’re on your own.

Tucker has not played left field since 2020, when it was his regular position. He has 72 career games (61 starts) in left. Based on the eye test and the fact he’s been a pretty good defender throughout his career, I don’t see why Tucker couldn’t play left. Hasn’t done it is different from can’t do it. It’s not like we’re putting Oswaldo Cabrera out there with no previous experience again. Tucker’s played left. Just not recently. 

(Reminder: Bellinger played three innings in left field from 2018-24 before playing there this year. He last started a game in left in 2017. Good athletes and good defenders can pick it back up quickly.) 

Also, left field doesn’t have to be permanent. Giancarlo Stanton has only two years left on his contract and we know the Yankees are willing to release unproductive players before their contracts are up. Stanton’s gone in two years at the latest, and once he is gone, I imagine Judge will become the most of the time DH. He’ll be at that age, you know? Tucker in left may only be a two-year thing, then it’s back over to his familiar right field.

The Yankees threw $760M at Juan Soto. Tucker is not the hitter Soto is, but whatever the Yankees were willing to do defensively with Soto long-term, they can do with Tucker, except it’s more likely to work because Tucker is a better defender than Soto. Having to put Tucker in left field (assuming that’s what would happen) falls under “not ideal but doable” and not “dealbreaker.” It is in no way a hangup to me.

Injury history

Tucker played 505 of 546 regular season games from 2020-23, with a COVID stint responsible for his only trip to the injured list those years. Three injuries, two of which I’m comfortable calling fluky, have limited Tucker the last two years though. Here’s what happened:

2024: Tucker fouled a pitch into his shin on June 3rd (video) and the injury was mismanaged. The Astros called it a contusion initially and Tucker had several starts and stops with his rehab. Eventually they discovered a fracture and treated it properly. Tucker returned in September and played quite well, even in the outfield. Between Tucker’s shin last year, Yordan Alvarez’s hand this year, and some pitcher stuff, the Astros’ injury management has come under fire lately.

2025: Tucker jammed his right ring finger sliding into second base on a stolen base attempt on June 1st (video). They found a fracture in his hand right away but determined Tucker could play through it, which he did. He played well too initially: .311/.404/.578 (172 wRC+) in June. The month after Tucker broke the bone in his hand was his most productive month of the season! It didn’t last though. He "slumped" down to a 109 wRC+ in July and August.

“I was doing fine and everything. Still playing well,” Tucker told Jordan Bastian in August. “So I was just like, ‘I’m going to keep playing.’ There wasn’t really a need to go on an IL, because I could still do everything. It was more like a pain tolerance at that point rather than like I physically couldn’t do anything.”

Tucker strained his left calf on Sept. 2nd and that sent him to the injured list for three weeks, which also gave his hand time to heal. He returned the final weekend of the season and DHed the rest of the way and in the postseason. Tucker was not yet cleared to play the outfield and DH was the only way to get him in the lineup during the season’s most important games, so he DHed.

Fouling a pitch into your shin and jamming your finger on a slide are unfortunate baseball injuries that could happen to any player. I don’t think they suggest Tucker is prone to injuries. The calf strain this September is the only non-fluky baseball play injury of his career. It’s not great that the three most significant injuries of his career have come in the last two seasons. The repeat injuries (calf strains every year, etc.) are most worrisome though and Tucker doesn’t have any.

Contract projections

Just to get this out of the way first: The Cubs made Tucker the qualifying offer. The Yankees would forfeit their second and fifth highest 2026 draft picks, and $1M in 2027 international bonus pool money, to sign him. With players of this caliber, I don’t worry about the draft/IFA penalties at all. The prospects acquired with those picks/money are years away from MLB and Tucker can help a win-now team win now.

As for the contract projections, they all have Tucker receiving one of the largest contracts in history, which stems from a) Tucker being really good, and b) free agency being short on impact bats both this winter and the next few. Here are the numbers:

• The Athletic (subs. req'd): 12 years, $460M ($38.3M per year)

• ESPN: 11 years, $418M ($38M per year)

• FanGraphs: 10 years, $360M ($36M per year)

• MLBTR: 11 years, $400M ($36.4M)

I think Tucker’s contract is more likely to start with a 4 than not, and I think he’s more likely to get 12 years than 10. 12 years takes him through age 40 and these days top position players get signed through their age 40 seasons. Vlad Guerrero Jr., Manny Machado, Juan Soto, Trea Turner, they 're all signed through age 40. Once you’re in that deep and talking 10-11 years, what’s a 12th? 2037 isn’t a real year anyway.

Whatever the years and dollars end up being, Tucker’s contract will probably include an opt out(s), it might include deferrals, all that stuff. These big contracts are so rarely this many dollars over this many years now. There’s always bells and whistles. Tucker’s an Excel client, not Scott Boras, but Excel is a massive agency with star clients that has negotiated complex contracts. They’ll do it again here.

Does he make sense for the Yankees?

Yes, he obviously does. Tucker is an excellent all-around hitter who would fit nicely into the lineup either directly ahead of Judge or behind him. He’s played for World Series contenders and (extremely) analytical teams, so he’s familiar with all that too. He didn’t just play for those kinda teams either. He was a feature piece in the middle of the lineup. Tucker’s familiar with the role the Yankees would ask him to play.

The defensive fit is not perfect but I don’t see it as a dealbreaker. I don’t see why Tucker couldn’t play left field in the short-term. He’s played it before, just not in a few years. The center field vacancy would still exist (unless the Yankees slide Jasson Domínguez to center?), but I don’t think you can get too caught up in looking for the perfect fit. It’s easier to build your roster around a star than it is to build your roster and find a star who fits perfectly.

Chances are the contract will exceed $400M and boy, that’s a lot of money, but that’s what it costs to sign the game’s best players these days. We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on some of these long-term deals. Stanton’s contract expires in two years. Gerrit Cole’s and Carlos Rodón’s the year after that. We’re not talking about saddling the Yankees with yet another contract that extends into the 2030s. They only have two of those (Judge and Max Fried), not five or six.

Tucker doesn’t get the attention Judge, Ohtani, Soto, et al get and he may not feel like an elite player, but my goodness, if this guy’s not elite, who is? He does everything you want a hitter to do and he's a reliable outfielder defensively. The Yankees need more players like Tucker. I don’t know why they’ve done it, but they’ve veered too far away from spending on top position player talent. Given the next few free agent classes, Tucker will be their last opportunity to land a top position player for money for some time. 

2. Rapid fire thoughts. The Yakult Swallows posted Munetaka Murakami over the weekend. His 45-day posting window closes at 5pm ET on Monday, Dec. 22nd. The early posting means it won’t drag into January and slow down the rest of free agency. No one doubts the power, but there are concerns about Murakami’s contact skills, defense, and position. He will get a significant contract and I don’t see the Yankees spending big on a corner infielder. If they pursue a Japanese player this offseason, righty Tatsuya Imai seems like the guy to get … The list of minor league free agents came out Friday. Usually I go through and look at the notable Yankees, but there really aren’t any this year. Most are veteran journeyman types. C-turned-RHP Antonio Gómez is the only interesting name there and I bet the Yankees re-sign him just to see the recent pitcher conversion through for another year … And finally, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Aaron Judge won Silver Sluggers. It’s Jazz’s first and Judge’s fifth. Judge tied Robbie Canó, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and Dave Winfield for the most in franchise history. (Alex Rodriguez has 10 Silver Sluggers, second only to Barry Bonds’ 12, but somehow only three as a Yankee.) The Yankees also won the team Silver Slugger for the second straight year. Thus concludes your Silver Slugger update.

(Send your questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com. The random Yankee series is on hiatus, but feel free to send in requests for if/when it returns.)