Is Kyle Tucker poised to be the best Cubs hitter since Sammy Sosa's peak years?

Kyle Tucker has historically been much better than any player on the Cubs current roster, and really any player over the last half -ecade. But could he be the North Siders' most valuable player since Sammy Sosa posted a season that required Barry Bonds to break the single-season home run record to beat him out for MVP?

The Cubs just haven't had a lot of players that provide enough offensively at high value defensive positions to ring up consistently gaudy WAR metrics. In the 23 seasons since Sosa's outlandish 2001 campaign, tonly five seasons ( by four players) have placed in the top 50 position player WAR seasons by a Cub ever. Those five seasons are below (listed with Fangraphs WAR and Fangraph's wRC calculation):

1. 2005 Derrek Lee: 7.7 WAR, 174 OPS+, 170 wRC (.335/.418/.662)
2. 2016 Kris Bryant: 7.3 WAR, 146 OPS+,148 wRC (.292/.385/.554)
3. 2019 Javier Baez: 6.6 WAR, 115 OPS+, 112 wRC (.281/.316/.531)
4. 2018 Javier Baez: 6.4 WAR, 129 OPS+, 131 wRC (.290/.326/.554)
5. 2015 Anthony Rizzo: 6.4 WAR, 146 OPS+, 145 wRC(.278/.387/.512)

It's shocking to remember how good Lee's 2005 season was. To me, it's clearly the best post-Steroid Era slate put together by a Cubs player. Bryant's MVP year in 2016 didn't feature nearly as much slugging as Lee, who rung up 99 extra-base hits. Baez's seasons were very strong and fun to watch, but are inflated heavily by extraordinary defensive metrics. Rizzo pieced together a string of great seasons with a peak in 2015 but he's not really in the neighborhood of Lee and Bryant's value creation.

So what range do we expect Tucker's stat line to be in 2025? Is he a threat to take Lee's crown?His Steamer projections forecast elite production at 142 wRC/5.3 WAR, but I think they are conservative when you consider the outlandish 180 wRC+ Tucker posted in his abbreviated 2024 campaign.

Kyle Tucker has the tools to have an all-time season for the Cubs

The extrapolated full-year projections for a 162-game campaign in 2024 would have placed Tucker in the 9-10 WAR range (also with some eye-popping counting stats - about 47 homers and 115 walks). Any concern about lingering effects from his shin injury was put to bed by his even more absurd stat line when he returned to the Astros lineup in September, slashing .365/.453/.587. Steamer projecting regression to some extent makes sense, but this seems overly pessimistic based on some intriguing elements to Tucker's 2024 campaign: namely his marked increase in walk rate and home run rate.

Walk rate is an appealing stat to use for projections because it is a highly sustainable metric and doesn't rely on any type of batted ball luck. Similarly to how defense provides Pete Crow-Armstrong a high floor in WAR accumulation, walks provide a similar boost to Tucker. The right fielder's 15.9 percent mark ranked him third in the majors behind Aaron Judge and Juan Soto - we are talking rarified air that Tucker has entered. It's taken a concerted effort by Tucker to get there and the yearly improvement in the OBP really lends to the narrative that his 2024 stat line might not be an aberration.

The increased home run rate is an interesting one to unpack, particularly when you note how consistent of a stat line producer Tucker had been in the three years prior. The right fielder clearly made a focus on launch angle heading into 2024: it jumped from 14.8 to 21.2. That's an incredible single-season increase to make and it allowed him to convert doubles into home runs, and also decreased his ground ball percentage to the lowest of his career. There could be some impact as a result of park factor shifting from Minute Maid to Wrigley, but it's just as likely that it's positive as negative if the Friendly Confines reverts back to its normal lefty-friendly atmosphere. It's very believable to think that this type of slugging production could be maintainable as Tucker firmly enters his prime offensive years at age 28.

Combining those two positives with the fact he'll get to face the underwhelming NL Central staffs consistently, there's a really good chance that Tucker posts a 7.5+ WAR season and surpasses Lee in 2025 as the best Cubs position player since 2001 Sammy. Regardless if he does or not, it's nice to have a truly elite player holding court again at Clark and Addison.