“Guys, you’re still trying to replace Giambi. I told you, we can’t do it. We can’t do it. Now, what we might be able to do is re-create him; recreate him in the aggregate.”
If you don’t immediately recognize those words from Moneyball, you’ve got some homework to do this weekend. But regardless of whether or not you’ve read the book/seen the movie, that may have sounded oddly familiar to you. And that’s because Jed Hoyer did his best Brad Pitt Billy Beane impression at his end-of-season press conference last week:
“Clearly, Kyle (Tucker) had a huge impact on our offense this year,” Hoyer said. “If he’s not here then that’s a void and we have to figure out how to replace that. But there’s a lot of different ways to do that. And so I think that’ll be the focus. There’s no question that if you don’t retain a player of his caliber, then you have to replace that WAR in some other ways. That’s something we’ll be really focused on. But how you do that can take many different shapes and forms.”
Jed Hoyer is, of course, correct. For however *relatively* underwhelming (and, at times, disappointing) Kyle Tucker’s 2025 season was on the North Side of Chicago, he was a significant offensive contributor overall: 91 runs scored, 73 RBI, 22 homers, 25 stolen bases, and a .266/.377/.464 (136 wRC+) slash line.
Even if you are very bullish on the combined expected production from Moises Ballesteros and Owen Caissie, losing Kyle Tucker is going to sting.
© Patrick Gorski-Imagn ImagesLosing Kyle Tucker
And that’s part of what I want to make clear today: One way or another, the Cubs *do* need to replace or recapture Kyle Tucker’s production this offseason. It’s not going to just happen organically/internally.
I won’t speak for all Cubs fans, but I know I’ve accidentally let myself swing too far in the other direction when discussing the expected departure of Kyle Tucker (mostly on the BN Cubs podcast). Maybe that’s just the natural reaction to his second-half slump, the multiple stints on the IL, his benchwarming during the Brewers series, or watching him swing through that 3-1, center-cut heater in the sixth inning of Game 5 … but I don’t think we can let Jed Hoyer and the Cubs front office off that easily.
Kyle Tucker may not have captured our hearts the way we thought he might’ve, and the banging of the extension drums heard in April, May, and June has certainly ceased. But I just feel like we need to plant this flag for posterity: The Cubs offense will be WORSE, perhaps significantly, next season without Kyle Tucker.
That is a definitive reality.
There’s a reason Kyle Tucker is still expected to get a long-term, multiple-hundred-million-dollar deal this winter. Sure, it’s possible he continues down a path where injuries derail large parts of his season and he never comes close again to the guy he was in 2024 (or the first two months of this season). But it’s also possible these recent injuries stay in the past. I mean, you guys … he’s a 28-year-old left-handed slugger with a career slash line of .273/.375/.507 (138 wRC+). Why have we let ourselves become THIS okay with the Cubs just letting him walk? It’s wrong.
That is not to say the Cubs should hand him a blank check. Even after all this, I can’t shake the feeling that he just doesn’t have it, for however homery that is (and it is very homery). But if Jed Hoyer is not going to seriously attempt to re-sign Kyle Tucker (and I don’t think he will … especially now that the Dodgers have signaled their interest), then he needs to bring in someone else to approximate that production.
And doing so may necessarily result in uncomfortable price tags (Alex Bregman), imperfect fits (Kyle Schwarber, Pete Alonso, Bo Bichette, Cody Bellinger, etc.), or both. And because that ALSO does not sound like something Jed Hoyer will do, I have my concerns.
Maybe this all could have gone without saying — and I certainly don’t think the desires of Cubs fans have any serious impact on Jed Hoyer’s front office — but the collective apathy I’ve seen and participated in (i.e., the way we’ve all preemptively counted the Cubs out on Kyle Tucker) just feels wrong.
And that just felt worth saying.
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