Which team is going to sign Kyle Tucker?

Question’s in the title, pretty much. Kyle Tucker is very good — he’s had five consecutive seasons between 4 and 5 fWAR, and he could’ve possibly cleared 5 in three of those seasons if not for some xwOBA underperformance there. He’s also the relatively rare star that has hit free agency before turning 30, which really helps him in the “make even more gobs of money” department.

The question is: which team is going to pony up — or, more specifically, win the ponying-up sweepstakes?

Going around various wild-ass-guesses from relatively reputable websites, I tallied his predicted 2026 team as follows:

Yankees: 7

Dodgers: 6

Blue Jays: 4

Phillies: 2

Giants: 2

Cubs: 1

Orioles: 1

Tigers: 1

The Yankees come out barely ahead of the Dodgers here, but they have an outfield of Jasson Dominguez, Trent Grisham, and Aaron Judge, with Giancarlo Stanton penciled in at DH. That’s not an impediment, but signing Tucker requires more work than just signing Tucker. The Dodgers have perhaps a more obvious fit, since a combination of Andy Pages, Tommy Edman, and Teoscar Hernandez can be mix-and-matched (or moved or whatever). For the Jays, you can also see that Nathan Lukes, Daulton Varsho, and Anthony Santander aren’t much of an impediment.

But then you get to the Phillies and… man, it just seems like John Middleton and Dave Dombrowski would love to spend some more stupid money on Tucker’s services. Their current outfield is Brandon Marsh, Josh Rojas/Justin Crawford, and Nick Castellanos (lol), and without Kyle Schwarber in the fold, their first DH option is… Otto Kemp? They also look like they can spend somewhere in the $50-$75 million range just to get back to where they were in 2025, depending on whether you care about Opening Day roster or luxury tax-relevant payroll, so, yeah.

Anyway, what do you think?