Kyle Tucker Moves From Space City to Windy City

There have been a flurry of trades and signings over the last week, including many involving impact fantasy players. Perhaps the most significant development was the Astros trading Kyle Tucker to the Cubs. It’s a pretty shocking trade considering that Tucker will be entering his age 28 season, has been a consistent 5 WAR player, and is departing a team that won the AL West. Let’s now consult the park factors to find out how the park switch might affect the left-handed hitter’s performance.

At first glance, this looks like a nice mix of park factor wins, with neither park having the obvious edge, sweeping the majority of the metrics.

Let’s dig deeper by starting with the hit type factors. Wrigley Field, the Cubs home park, inflates all non-home run hit types. That includes a ranking as the fifth best park in baseball for left-handed triples. Minute Maid Park is also a strong triples park, but not nearly as good as Wrigley. Of course, Tucker isn’t exactly a triples machine, so this park factor shouldn’t impact his results much, if at all.

Stepping backward to the singles factors, we find that Wrigley inflates the most common hit type, while Minute Maid has suppressed them. We also find similar factors for doubles. The factors suggest that moving to Wrigley should provide a meaningful boost in BABIP. That could be a boon to Tucker, who owns just a .284 career BABIP, which is below the league average. He actually has posted a better mark at home, .288 to .279, but both of those numbers are worse than average. As an extreme fly ball hitter, it makes sense that he’s posted suppressed BABIP marks, but perhaps the new park could at least push him back up to average, which is a level he hasn’t recorded since 2021.

Next up are home runs and there’s a far more significant gap here than I would have guessed. Isn’t the perception that Wrigley is a home run friendly park?! It actually ranks 23rd among park in left-handed home run factor, and doesn’t fare much better for right-handers. On the other hand, Minute Maid ranks ninth in left-handed home run factor, inflating them by 10%, which is quite meaningful.

That said, Tucker’s HR/FB rate splits suggest that perhaps using straight handedness factors won’t work. For his career, he has actually posted a lower HR/FB rate at home at just 13.4%, versus a 16.7% mark on the road. His fly ball directional distribution is fairly close to the league average, so you figure he would match up pretty well with the park factors, but that’s just not the case. His spray charts also show the vast majority of his home runs are pulled to right-center and right field. If you believe in Statcast’s Expected Home Runs by Park chart, you might also take solace in knowing he would have only lost four home runs (or six, as Statcast calculates two of his Minute Maid home runs were undeserved) throughout his entire career if he had been playing in Wrigley the whole time. So maybe the park switch won’t impact his home run total as much as the factors make us fear.

Moving right along, we learn that despite the advantages in the non-home run hit type factors, Wrigley only ends up with a small win in the hit factor as Minute Maid’s home run factor dominance makes up for most of the gap. Both parks inflate walks, with Wrigley doing so slightly less. Ultimately, the minor advantage in hits at Wrigley is completely offset by the minor advantage in walks at Minute maid, resulting in identical OBP factors of a neutral impact.

Tucker’s walk rate has been on an unbelievable upward trajectory, rising every season since his small sample 2019. In about half a season this year, he pushed his walk rate to what would have been a career high of 16.5%, which follows his first double digit mark recorded in 2023. This is a sign of an excellent hitter becoming an elite one. The park switch should have no impact on his plate patience.

We hop on over to strikeouts next where once again we find two inflationary factors that are just one percentage different. Both parks increase strikeouts, but Wrigley does so slightly more. Part of what makes Tucker such a good hitter is his contact ability, while still delivering exceptional power. It’s a rare combo, but it makes the hitters that possess it fantastic at the plate. Once again, despite Minute Maid’s strikeout inflating ways, Tucker has struck out more on the road. Heck, looking at his walk rate splits now, he also walked more on the road! So Tucker continues to perform completely opposite of what the factors suggest.

Finally, we end with the runs scored factors and overall park factors. We now know that Wrigley boosts hits and BABIP, but the gap in home run factor, along with the slight deficits in both walks and strikeouts, make the park slightly pitcher friendly overall and less favorable for left-handed hitters than Minute Maid.

Overall, since home runs have the biggest impact on Tucket’s fantasy value, the park factors suggest the move to Wrigley is a negative one. But after looking at his historical home/road splits, it’s clear that Tucker’s performance doesn’t match the factors at all. So perhaps his home run power won’t be impacted as much as feared.

In terms of supporting cast, the two teams scored a nearly identical number of runs last year, and that’s with Tucker contributing to the Astros total, and not the Cubs. The quality of the Cubs lineup will depend on what the team does with Cody Bellinger, but both lineups look mediocre at best, so he shouldn’t be impacted much by the lineup switch. I think solely based on the rick those home run factors convey, Tucker has to get downgraded a bit, but he might ultimately prove the factors simply don’t apply here.