Dusty would be proud. We have two brothers, Matthews and Cam on the fast track to the starting 9. Remember him being disappointed in 2022 at the media events We lost a Mexican in Urquidy but gained one in Walls.
All things considered this is a good return - Tuck was leaving either way. Paredes should play well at Enron Minute Maid Daikin, is under team control, and provides a lot of flexibility (could plug a gap at 1B or 3B). The Astros also got what will be the #1 prospect in their system and an arm that might add some bullpen depth (hopefully they see something in Wesneski). If they are willing to go over the tax line this year and fill a few more holes on the roster they should be able to stay competitive and be better positioned going forward.
Net over their replacements. Astros lost Tucker (5 wins) and replace him with a 1 war pupu platter (Dezenzo, Dubon, etc.). They gained Paredes (3 wins) who replaces Whitcomb (1 win).
I fully expect that Kyle Tucker will win at least one MVP in his career. He is the ideal and prototypical Right Fielder. He plays gold glove defense, he has exceptional speed, he’s got a great arm, he hits for average, hits for power, can run the bases like a gazelle, etc. Having said that, the straw that broke the desire by the Astros to resign him was the Soto deal. I doubt the Astros offer him 400 million, and he’s poised to have an MVP season; so the bidding might be in the 500-600 million. I remember how folks said his stroke reminded so many of Ted Williams. And now Tucker is gone from my favorite team. I wonder if the Cubs realize Kyle Tucker bet on himself a few years ago, and he’s got enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life. But Tucker, much like Soto is willing to squeeze every dime on his next contract. And that’s not a bad thing, after all it’s just business in the big leagues.
I've been warning some Cubs fans that Tuck has never made it secret that he's going to the highest bidder and to be ready to pony up. He's won his World Series so money is going to trump everything including sentimentality and winning,
Cam Smith was the 14th pick in the 2024 draft. Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 50 | Run: 45 | Arm: 60 | Field: 50 | Overall: 55 Smith displayed top-three-rounds talent as a Florida high schooler in 2022 but went undrafted because he was old for his class at 19 years and five months and also had a strong Florida State commitment. After a rough freshman season with the Seminoles, he made some changes to his stance and approach and starred in the Cape Cod League, where scouts voted him the summer circuit's top prospect. He earned All-America honors and led Florida State to the College World Series by batting .387 with 16 homers in 2024, a prelude to going 14th overall in the Draft to the Cubs and signing for $5,070,700. He reached Double-A at the conclusion of a strong pro debut, then went to the Astros in the Kyle Tucker trade in December. Smith employed a more compact stance, made better swing decisions and used the entire field more judiciously in 2024 than he did a year ago, adjustments that helped him cut his strikeout rate from 29 to 15 percent. A right-handed hitter, he consistently barrels balls and produces high exit velocities thanks to his combination of bat speed and strength. He hits a lot of groundballs and has yet to pull the ball regularly in the air, which may cap his home run ceiling at 20 per season. Though he has fringy speed and isn't much of a threat on the bases, Smith has decent range at third base. His plus arm strength fits well at the hot corner, and he was a more reliable defender in his second college season compared to his first. If he loses any quickness as he gets older, he could land in right field.
Tucker is LH Jason Lane swinging, attempting to hit himself in the back, or back of the head, with the bat while dropping a knee. There...ya got it?
Yes, immediately our times are changed. Why? How do we know? Because half of us are at the tavern tonight drinking up our own delusion. The other half are at home, suffering because they don't have any bar at all. And that sounds like poetry, but what you will find is that we are sober, and petrified by the only truth... that we got fleeced.
Man... Paredes has one of the worst bat speeds, exit velos, and hard hit% in the game. I'm much less confident in this dude than most of you
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5993187/2024/12/13/cubs-astros-kyle-tucker-trade-analysis/ The Kyle Tucker trade is probably going to work out very well for the Houston Astros because of Cam Smith, but at the same time, it’s less than I thought they’d get for Tucker, who played like a superstar in half a season in 2024 and was worth 5-plus WAR for three straight years before that. … Smith, a 6-foot-4, athletic infielder, is the jewel for the Astros here, as the Cubs’ first-round pick in 2024 rolled right into pro ball after a full season at Florida State (hitting .387/.488/.654 in 66 games with just a 15 percent strikeout rate) and then hit .313/.396/.609 across Low A, High A and Double A in 32 more games, again keeping his strikeout rate low (18 percent). Smith remade his body and his swing last offseason and went from kind of a power-over-hit guy who might not stay on the dirt as a 19-year-old high schooler to a pure hitter with looser hands and better bat speed for more frequent and harder contact. He’s only played third base in 2024 between college and the minors and could stay there but is more likely to end up at first or in an outfield corner. There’s a chance this is an elite bat regardless of his position, though, and he immediately becomes the Astros’ best prospect. Paredes is a solid regular who gets on base at an above-average clip and puts the ball in play a lot but has never really grown into harder contact as many scouts expected when he was in his early 20s. His batted-ball metrics are pretty bad across the board, ranking in the bottom quartile in MLB in barrel rate and expected average, the bottom 10 percent in hard-hit rate and the bottom 5 percent in average exit velocity. It’s not great bat speed, and if anything seemed a little worse in 2024, as he went from hammering four-seamers to being just adequate against them. He’s a fringy but serviceable defender at third. His on-base skills are good enough to make him a valuable regular despite all of these limitations, peaking at 4.2 bWAR/4.3 fWAR in 2023, but there isn’t much upside here and he’s going to age extremely poorly. He’s under team control through 2027. Right-hander Hayden Wesneski has starter potential but has been extremely homer-prone in the majors, giving up 32 homers in 157 innings over the past two seasons, two-thirds of them coming off fastballs. He relies heavily on his sweeper, possibly throwing too many different pitches for others to be effective. Though he’s been better in relief in the majors, it’s not a massive difference — 14 points of OBP, 33 points of slugging — and he probably has more value as a back-end starter/swingman than a true reliever. It’s just one year of Tucker’s services, so his trade value isn’t as high as you might expect for a player of his caliber. Even acknowledging that, this deal feels like one excellent prospect and some guys. I’m not a big Paredes believer; his value seems to be as the potential everyday third baseman if Alex Bregman walks, and I expect some decline from Paredes even over the three years he has left to free agency. Houston might have been more inclined to take a deal that returned two big leaguers and one prospect than two or three prospects and maybe less help for the 2025 roster, as they’re still in contending mode. That might have returned less total value than they could have gotten if they’d gone strictly for youth.
