You Might Not Have Noticed, but Kyle Tucker is the American League's Best Right Fielder

Houston Astros' slugger Kyle Tucker may be the top right fielder in the American League.

© Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

Kyle Tucker finished 20th in MVP voting for the 2021 season. After toiling through platoon opportunities through three Major League seasons, he was finally on the map.

However, the 2022 season has been a slight disappointment for the Houston Astros' right fielder. If this season has been underwhelming even by Tucker's standards, how could he possibly be a better right fielder than players like Teoscar Hernández, Taylor Ward and of course, Aaron Judge?

For one, Judge is no longer a right fielder. He's made just a third of his starts in 2022 in right field. Most of his playing time has come at center field instead of the position he came to the Big Leagues playing.

Thus, Tucker really doesn't have a lot of competition for the American League's top right fielder. Still, he has played far better than his conventional stats would have you believe.

Tucker's value comes from being a five-tool player, something the Toronto Blue Jays' Hernández, and the Los Angeles Angels' Ward lack. While both are tremendous hitters, their OPS+'s are 129 and 131 respectively, neither are good fielders, nor particularly great baserunners.

Tucker currently ranks seventh in AL stolen bases with 16, having been caught just twice. He also ranks second among all AL outfielders in Defensive Runs Saved with 12. That's an almost absurd total for a player to have through August.

While both Ultimate Zone Rating and Outs Above Average are a little less bullish on Tucker's defense, they have him at 1.1 and 2 respectively and they do concur that he a well above-average fielder.

Given that the main metric in it's calculation is range factor, DRS is sometimes unreliable in small sample sizes. Range factor, very simply, measures how many plays a player makes, it is entirely volume based. It's a great tool for large sample sizes, but due to chaos and luck, it can be widely variable in small sample sizes.

Fortunately in this case, DRS rates Tucker very highly over a much larger sample size: his whole career. Over the course of his five Major League seasons, DRS believe Tucker is worth 14 defensive runs saved per 162 games, and 2,706 1/3 innings are a solid defensive sample size.

Nevertheless, that still leaves Tucker's lagging behind other AL right fielders offensively. His OPS has cratered from .917 to .792 in 2022. Granted, some of that decline is due to a generally decrease in offense league wide, but Tucker's BABIP has decreased from .304 to .250. That is an unreasonably steep drop off to occur at age-25. Lady luck has not smiled upon Kyle Tucker in 2022.

Baseball Savant, however, does calculate Tucker's expected stats like xBA and xSLG. They better explain how he might perform in a totally league-neutral environment.

Given those parameters, Tucker's expected slashline is .269/.365/.493 for an OPS of .849. That would lead all American League right fielders by a sizable margin.

Though his value may be underlying, Tucker is better at every tool than every other American League right fielder.

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