The question is not who won the Kyle Tucker trade
It's, "Did the Cubs give up Cam Smith to hold onto two other Tucker replacements?"
The Cubs slow slide back to the pack in the NL Central continued apace with a trip to the stupid ballpark in Houston over the weekend. The Cubs managed to lose the series while outscoring the Astros 16-13 thanks to a 12-3 win in the middle game.
The series was a return home for Kyle Tucker and Ryan Pressly who won the 2022 World Series with the Astros. Tucker hit a three run homer on Saturday, Pressly pitched scoreless innings on Saturday and Sunday, but a very dumb conversation was spurred (predictably) by homers on Friday and Saturday by Cam Smith.
Smith was part of the haul Houston got for Tucker, along with human parallelogram Isaac Paredes and home run thrower Hayden Wesneski.
The question was, "Will Houston end up winning the trade?"
The answer to that question is no. The Cubs got the best player in the trade in Kyle Tucker. Granted, if they cheap out and don't retain his services after this season you'll wonder why the fuck they even bothered, but the cost paid to get Tucker was fine. It cost what it cost.
The question that should be asked is did the Cubs trade the wrong prospect in the deal? That's a much more fair question.
Smith entered the weekend series slugging just .402 on the season. Not what you're looking for out of your big, strapping power hitting right fielder.
But, there are a lot of buts.
He's just 22 years old. Before this season he'd played a week's worth of baseball above class-A. He's learning a new position on the fly. He's carrying around the burden of not just being the key part of the trade that cost the Astros one of the best hitters in baseball, but he's literally replacing him in right field.
And, his slugging has improved month over month. It was just .373 in April, .400 in May and thanks in part of the Cubs pitching it's .518 in June.
Tucker has been every bit as good as advertised for the Cubs. So the trade was a good idea. But did the Cubs have to include Smith to get it done?
Early reports after the trade were that the Astros asked for Matt Shaw as the key prospect part. Shaw was the Cubs top prospect, and they expected him to compete for and win the starting third base job on a team they still expect to go to the playoffs.
So, at some point both the Cubs and Astros had to wrestle with the "Smith or Shaw" dilemma.
