Broken Record: Dodgers Land Top Free Agent Kyle Tucker While Setting a New Contract Standard

The Dodgers have struck again. For the second winter out of the past three, they’ve snuck in and landed the top free agent on the market, just when he was expected to sign elsewhere. But unlike Shohei Ohtani, who in December 2023 nearly signed with the Blue Jays before agreeing to a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers, one in which all but $2 million per season was deferred, Kyle Tucker has gone for a short-term deal of four years and $240 million.

According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the deal includes a $64 million signing bonus; $30 million of the total salary is deferred, reducing the net present value to $57.1 million a year. That still means that Tucker, who will turn 29 on Saturday, has set a record for the highest average annual value of any contract, exceeding that of last year’s record-setter, Juan Soto, by about 12%, albeit on a much shorter deal:

According to multiple reports, Tucker’s deal includes opt-outs after both the 2027 and ’28 campaigns, allowing him to seek a new contract as he heads into either his age-31 or age-32 season. Until then, he’ll join the star-studded lineup of the sport’s first back-to-back champions in a quarter-century. The Dodgers may sport future Hall of Famers in Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman, but their outfield was an area of weakness in 2025. Dodgers outfielders combined to hit .240/.299/.415 while ranking 17th in the majors with a 98 wRC+ and 18th with 4.3 WAR. While Andy Pages had a breakout age-24 season as the team’s primary center fielder, left fielder Michael Conforto was such a free-agent bust that he was left off the postseason roster, and right fielder Teoscar Hernández was unable to replicate his stellar 2024 and was a defensive liability to boot. During the postseason, Dodgers outfielders hit .209/.258/.332, with Hernández accounting for five of the unit’s six home runs.

How manager Dave Roberts will fit the pieces together remains to be seen, but the path of least resistance is probably to return Hernández to left field (where he spent most of his time in 2024) and slot the defensively superior Tucker in right. It’s also possible Hernández could be traded in order to get some salary relief; he’s guaranteed $33 million, including the next two seasons’ salaries and a $6.5 million buyout of a club option for 2028, with much of that money deferred as well.

As for Tucker, he’s not a household name on par with Judge, Ohtani, or Soto, the last three free agents to top our annual offseason lists are, but since the start of the 2021 season, he’s 10th among all position players in WAR (23.4) and wRC+ (143) despite missing half of the 2024 season. Drafted by the Astros out of a Tampa high school with the fifth pick in 2015, he reached the majors in mid-2018 and stuck around for good starting in September 2019. He helped the Astros to six straight playoff appearances, including three World Series appearances and a championship in 2022, and made the American League All-Star team annually from 2022–24. Concerned that they would not be able to retain him in free agency — or more to the point, were unwilling to go as high as the biggest-spending teams — the Astros traded him to the Cubs in December 2024 in exchange for infielder Isaac Paredes, outfielder Cam Smith, and right-handed pitcher Hayden Wesneski.

Tucker made another All-Star team in 2025 while helping the Cubs win 92 games, claim a Wild Card berth, and beat the Padres before bowing to the Brewers in the Division Series. Yet his season was an uneven one. He hit .291/.395/.537 (157 wRC+) with 17 homers through the end of June, but slipped into a protracted slump at the start of July; for a 39-game stretch, he hit .184/.321/.228 with just one homer. On August 21, the Cubs revealed that Tucker had played through a hairline fracture in his right ring finger, suffered during a June 1 slide. While the injury didn’t align with his drop in production, the announcement, which followed a brief benching for a mental and mechanical reset, seemed to provide a jolt. He homered three times over the next two days (August 21–22) and tore the cover off the wall for two weeks, but a left calf strain sidelined him for most of September.

Tucker’s final .266/.377/.464 line thus looks a little disappointing, particularly given his career-low slugging percentage and full-season low 22 homers (plus 25 steals). Even so, his 136 wRC+ matches what he did from 2020–23, and his 4.5 WAR was on par with those season’s marks. It’s the .289/.408/.585 (179 wRC+) line and 4.2 WAR he put up in 78 games in 2024 — with three months lost to a fracture in his right shin — that may have distorted expectations about his ability to land a contract in the $400 million to $500 million range.

Clearly that kind of money wasn’t out there for Tucker at this juncture. According to reports from Tuesday, the Mets made Tucker an offer with a $50 million AAV, though it was believed to be only for three or four years. Reports from MLB Network’s Jim Duquette, the New York Post’s Jon Heyman, and The Athletic’s Will Sammon indicate that the Mets’ final offer was four years and $220 million, with a $75 million signing bonus, the same opt-outs as the Dodgers, but no deferred money — a $55 million AAV. The Blue Jays were said to have made a longer-term offer, though neither the dollars nor the length was specified in the report from ESPN’s Jesse Rogers. The Yankees showed interest but are not known to have made a formal offer; instead, they’e been more focused on re-signing Cody Bellinger, with ESPN’s Buster Olney reporting that they’d offered him a five-year deal with an AAV above $30 million, but that those talks are at an impasse. The Cubs issued Tucker a $22.025 million qualifying offer, but once he declined it, they moved on; earlier this week, they landed Alex Bregman on a five-year, $175 million deal that included deferred money.

The Dodgers, whose $417.3 million luxury tax payroll for 2025 led to them being assessed a record $169.4 million competitive balance tax, had little to no buzz attached to their pursuit of Tucker. They didn’t have any high-salaried players coming off their payroll, and they already made a modest splash during the December Winter Meetings by signing closer Edwin Díaz to a three-year, $69 million deal.

One reason the Dodgers might prefer Tucker on a short-term deal is to avoid blocking their top outfield prospects, Josue De Paula and Zyhir Hope. Both are headed into their age-21 seasons having played only a few games apiece at Double-A at the end of last season (four for De Paula, six for Hope), with the former, a 55-FV prospect who topped the recent Dodgers list, expected to reach the majors in 2027, and the latter a 50-FV prospect expected to arrive a year later. Those aren’t exactly can’t-miss guys, but they are important depth, particularly since the Díaz and Tucker signings carry additional costs. Given that the Dodgers are well over the tax threshold, signing Díaz — to whom the Mets issued a qualifying offer — already meant they would forfeit their second- and fifth-highest draft picks, as well as $1 million from their international bonus pool as a penalty. For signing Tucker, they’ll lose their third- and sixth-highest picks as well.

Courtesy of Dan Szymborski, here’s the ZiPS projection for Tucker:

That’s 13.0 WAR over the four-year span, a projection for which ZiPS suggests a $149 million contract. So yes, this appears to be a substantial overpay even before factoring in the additional taxes this will cost the Dodgers — which should tell you that for as quiet as they’ve been in their pursuit, they really wanted him.

Given that it’s the two-time champions adding the number one free agent on the market, setting a record for AAV, and using some amount of deferred money to flex their muscle, tthis isn’t likely to reduce anyone’s ire towards the Dodgers, or rival fans’ and executives’ discomfort with their combination of spending and success. On the contrary, it will add to the din regarding the game’s financial inequities and the seeming inevitability of a lockout next winter, renew calls for a salary cap, and probably boost sales of fainting couches among team owners. It’s likely that the next Collective Bargaining Agreement will create even stiffer penalties for the crime of trying to win. Until then, the Dodgers are gunning for a three-peat.