Astros GM comments on extension talks with young All-Star

New Astros general manager Dana Brown recently chatted with Brian McTaggart of MLB.com and was asked whether they have begun extension talks with some of their younger players such as Kyle Tucker. “Tucker, we’ve been in conversation,” Brown said. “Some of the stuff was started prior to me coming. We had some talks with Tucker, of course, because it’s coming up on the arbitration hearing.”

The fact that the club is interested in extending Tucker is hardly shocking. For one thing, it was reported back in May that the club had reached out to Tucker’s camp but didn’t get very far at that time. That they are still interested in such an arrangement makes perfect sense as Tucker has continued to cement himself as one of the league’s best all-around players in the interim. He launched 30 home runs last year and stole 25 bases. His 9.7% walk rate and 15.6% strikeout rate were both better than league average, leading to a .257/.330/.478 batting line and 129 wRC+. His outfield glovework was ranked as above average by all three of defensive runs saved, outs above average and ultimate zone rating.

All of that taken together allowed Tucker to produce 4.7 wins above replacement on the season, per the calculations of FanGraphs. That was a slight improvement over the 4.6 he posted the year before. When combined with his 1.7 fWAR from the shortened 2020 season, he’s tallied 11.1 over the past three years, placing him 16th among all position players in that time.

Of course, that excellent production means that he’s likely set himself up for some strong earnings. He qualified for arbitration for the first time this offseason, with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting him for a raise to a $5.6M salary for 2023. He and the club didn’t agree to terms prior to the filing deadline, with Tucker submitting a figure of $7.5M and the team at $5M. The 26-year-old will be eligible for two further passes through the arbitration system in 2024 and 2025 before he’s slated to become a free agent, just a couple of months prior to his 29th birthday.

There haven’t been many lengthy extensions recently signed by position players in the three- to four-year service bracket, but there is one recent comparable in Sean Murphy. He is a catcher and two years older than Tucker, so it’s not an apple-to-apples comparison. However, he did produce 10.0 fWAR in the three seasons prior to agreeing to a six-year, $73M deal with Atlanta in December, within range of Tucker’s 11.1 fWAR tally in that time. Moving up to the four- to five-year service class and we find another interesting comparison in Matt Olson. He produced 9.7 fWAR in the three seasons from 2019 to 2021 before signing an eight-year, $168M extension with Atlanta prior to the 2022 campaign. He had earned $5M in his first arbitration season with the A’s in 2021, which Tucker could potentially do as well, depending on the results of his hearing. Olson was two years older at that time than Tucker is now, as he was going into his age-28 campaign. Given Tucker’s youth and stronger overall results, he could plausibly ask for something topping Murphy’s guarantee right now and perhaps go beyond Olson next year. The huge gaps between those two deals highlights why Houston might want a deal done sooner rather than later.

For the Astros, their recent track record is mixed when it comes to their homegrown stars. George Springer and Carlos Correa reached free agency and signed elsewhere while Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman and Yordan Alvarez signed lengthy contracts to stick around. Brown, of course, just came over to the club from Atlanta, a team that has famously given out more extensions recently than any other. In addition to Olson and Murphy, they’ve also locked up Ronald Acuna Jr., Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, Spencer Strider and Michael Harris II over the past few years. Perhaps Brown can bring that playbook with him to Houston, but it’s unclear if any of the recent talks have got the two sides close to any kind of agreement.