Just because the Los Angeles Dodgers can make the move doesn’t mean it’s a good one for any team in Major League Baseball.
The most awaited signing of the MLB offseason finally occurred Thursday night, with the Los Angeles Dodgers unsurprisingly emerging to sign top free agent target Kyle Tucker to a gargantuan four-year deal worth $240 million.
Widely regarded as the top free agent of the 2025-26 class, Tucker was seen as a player that could net a deal rivaling the monster contracts signed by Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani early during the 2025 season, though injuries and a mostly lackluster second half clearly tempered his market.
The result was Tucker not quite landing the ultra slam dunk in both years and total dollar value that Soto and Ohtani were able to, though the financial guarantee is incredibly hefty – $60 million a season for four years.
The yearly guarantee puts Tucker above all MLB players besides Ohtani, with the contracts of both Tucker and Ohtani being laden with deferrals. While Tucker didn’t net an ultra long-term deal, it appears that the outcome may have been more by choice than circumstance.
While the New York Mets offered Tucker a similar four-year deal worth $220 million, the outfielder reportedly had a longer-term offer from the Toronto Blue Jays on the table as well. With the massive guarantee on a relatively short length, Tucker’s camp likely sees the Dodgers contract as the ultimate win-win: four years of an otherworldly salary with potentially another chance to cash in on the free agency market ahead of his age-33 season.
The signing is certainly a massive win for both Tucker and the Dodgers, with Los Angeles fielding a bona fide All-Star team of a lineup as they’ll enter 2026 as the undisputed favorites to win their third World Series in a row.
Although it’s a solid move for the bottomless pocketed Dodgers, other teams shouldn’t be losing too much sleep after missing out on signing Tucker.
There’s no doubt that Tucker is one of the game’s finest hitters when healthy – entering his age-29 season, the rightfielder has compiled 25.5 WAR over the past five seasons, smacking 140 doubles and 134 home runs alongside 105 stolen bases and a 145 OPS+. At his best, Tucker is a proven MVP candidate who is both an incredibly tough out at the plate and a fierce slugger from the left side of the plate.
Yet digging just a little bit deeper, there is reason for hesitancy when looking at Tucker’s recent output – particularly in the past two seasons when affected by injury.
Between 2021 and 2023, when Tucker only missed a combined 39 regular season games, he posted 16.3 WAR with a .278/.353/.517/.870 slash line, good for a 139 OPS+ with 89 home runs and 69 stolen bases.
Tucker’s dominance reached a new level in his injury-shortened 2024 season, when the outfielder managed an incredible 179 OPS+ with 23 home runs and 13 doubles in just 78 games played. His 2025 season appeared to simply be more of the same, with Tucker taking a .280 batting average and .882 OPS into the All-Star break.
However, Tucker greatly struggled in the second half while dealing with a left calf strain that caused him to miss much of September. After hitting 17 home runs prior to the All-Star break, Tucker hit just five long balls for the rest of the season, compiling a .231/.360/.378/.738 second half slash line with only 11 extra-base hits and just three of his 25 stolen bases for the season.
Returning in time for the postseason, Tucker was 7-for-27 across the NL Wild Card series and NLDS, with his lone extra-base hit being a home run in Game 4 of the NLDS. His 0-for-4 showing with two strikeouts in the decisive Game 5 that included a crucial rally-killing strikeout in the sixth inning served as an ending sour note for his tenure in Chicago.
With that said, Tucker is about as proven as one can be for a player of his age, with a World Series title and 72 playoff games under his belt. While not an all-time playoff performer by any means, Tucker has still managed eight doubles and nine home runs with a .692 OPS in his postseason career.
There’s certainly a solid possibility that Tucker returns fully healthy as a Dodger in 2026 as an MVP-level player, as he’s quietly been among the game’s most accomplished hitters for half-a-decade – but he is certainly no Shohei Ohtani or Juan Soto.
While Ohtani is accepted by many to be the greatest player in North America’s oldest major professional sport and Soto entered free agency at an unusually young age, Tucker’s case is one that has been seen before and will be seen again – that of a great player who is clearly at the top of his class, but does not present a generational opportunity on the free agency market.
As a Cubs fan myself, it certainly felt like it could trend in that direction at times during the first half of the 2025 season, when Tucker was producing at an MVP level while anchoring an incredibly productive lineup. Had Tucker stayed healthy and been an MVP finalist for a team that went on to appear in or win a World Series, perhaps his free agency would be seen as a generational opportunity by front offices around the league.
Instead, Tucker grappled with his second consecutive injury-riddled season and faltered down the stretch with a second half well below career standards and a forgettable postseason. For a team like the Los Angeles Dodgers, the financial resources, status as a defending champion and perennial contender and excellent farm system make those risks almost seem insignificant.
The Dodgers can afford Tucker financially, but they can also afford the failure of the contract. If Tucker struggles greatly or deals with injuries that keep him off the field, the Dodgers literally have three MVP winners in their starting lineup to offset the loss in production. The massive yearly guarantee the Dodgers were able to offer Tucker also allows them to not be tied to him any longer than four years, whereas other teams would have likely needed to lock him down for the remainder of his career in order to afford him.
For essentially every other team, signing Tucker to a multi-year blockbuster deal would be entrusting much of the team’s future into one player, likely taking most other clubs out of contention to sign other free agents for a number of years afterwards.
While the Mets offered Tucker just $20 million short of what he ultimately received, even Steve Cohen’s deep pockets are likely feeling the squeeze as multiple years of paying the luxury tax continues while the team maintains long-term commitments to Soto and Francisco Lindor.
For a player of Soto’s or Ohtani’s caliber, this risk is widely seen as worth it – while most clubs simply couldn’t afford to even be in the conversation, there’s little doubt that the vast majority, if not all of them, would have wagered their financial future to sign Soto and Ohtani.
Though perhaps less applicable to Soto given Ohtani’s status as a global sports icon, both players bring an immeasurable level of return on the initial investment back to their teams. Soto and Ohtani are generational stars and household names, players that are seen as must-watch TV who put fans in the stands, sell thousands of jerseys and drive up interest in the team and sport – the same can be said for generational New York Yankees’ star Aaron Judge.
Yet it feels extreme to lump Kyle Tucker in with that class, much of which is out of his control and not his fault. Tucker doesn’t pitch and hit while representing his country in a foreign league, nor does he have the explosive, unmistakable persona and competitive energy that Juan Soto has. He’s just a really good baseball player, a guy that has proven over the course of his career to simply show up and perform at an incredibly high level while missing out on some of the accolades his more well-known peers have received.
When it comes to a contract the size of Tucker’s, the ultimate off-field impact is likely considered quite a bit, and it’s easy to see how teams could have decided that Tucker was not worth a generational investment. He’s an outstanding player that could win an MVP award in his future, and is likely to post lofty offensive numbers if healthy – but he’s not a ubiquitious household name, nor a player that one can easily see a team marketing their entire club around.
As for the Dodgers, they already have that guy in Shohei Ohtani, and Kyle Tucker’s presence is that of just another All-Star-level hitter in a seemingly impenetrable lineup.
For other teams, it was likely hard to imagine making the largest investment in a team’s history to make Kyle Tucker the undisputed face of the franchise and leader towards a pursuit of a World Series champion.
Though it’s indicative of a larger conversation to have as a likely 2027 MLB lockout nears, the Dodgers’ signing of Kyle Tucker comes down to something quite clear:
What is risky for 29 MLB teams is not risky for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Signing Kyle Tucker was simply a demonstration of that fact.
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