Carson Tucker is ready to follow — and surpass — his big-league brother
By Zach Buchanan Jun 10, 2020 13
In the spring of 2014, scouts filled the stands at Mountain Pointe High in Phoenix to get a glimpse of a future big-league shortstop. Cole Tucker was tall and lanky, with dark curls bouncing from under his hat as he ran around the infield. Soon, the 17-year-old switch-hitter would be a first-round draft pick, going No. 24 overall to the Pirates that summer. Five years later, he’d make his big-league debut.
But if those scouts were really paying attention, they also would have spied the 12-year-old facsimile of Tucker who was in attendance to cheer the shortstop on. The top of Carson Tucker’s head came only to Cole’s shoulder, although the stature would change as the younger brother would shoot up to 6-foot-2 over the next half-decade. So, correspondingly, would the attention. If scouts missed Carson Tucker then, they’ve noticed him since.
Wednesday, the 18-year-old was selected 23rd overall by the Cleveland Indians, surprising many who had him pegged as a second- or third-rounder. Instead, he went a pick ahead of where his older brother was drafted, and there are at least two people who are confident he’ll wind up the better player. One is Carson, who claims with a quiet certainty that he is better now than his brother was as an amateur. The other is Cole, who wholeheartedly agrees.
“Where he was at 5 years old was way better than I was at 5 years old,” Cole says. “Where he was at 10 years old was way better than I was at 10 years old. Where I was at 18, he’s just way better than me now.”
If Carson signs and forgoes his college commitment to the University of Texas, the Indians will be getting a polished shortstop who has benefited from his older brother’s experience even as he’s remained intent on blazing his own trail. They’ll also be getting a prospect who, despite a No. 84 placement in Keith Law’s latest prospect rankings, has some high-profile believers in his corner.
“Honestly, we always knew he was going to be good,” said Dodgers star Cody Bellinger, who has known Carson since playing high school travel ball with Cole. “I’m not just saying that. He was always a stud.”
Cole and Carson Tucker on draft day in 2014. (Courtesy of the Tucker family)
Instead of playing out his senior season, Carson Tucker spent the last few months working out in a friend’s garage. The company was pretty good, though. Among his batting practice companions were some of the best high school players to come out of the Phoenix area. Cole is there, as is Bellinger. So is former Phillies top prospect Scott Kingery, Red Sox prospect Bobby Dalbec and Blue Jays prospect Patrick Murphy.
Carson’s used to playing up, though. When he started playing Little League and travel ball, he took the field alongside kids two years his elder. He was small and scrawny as a freshman at Mountain Pointe, yet he claimed the starting job at second base. Matt Denny, who coached at Mountain Pointe for Carson’s first three years there, can’t remember a freshman making such an impact on varsity. “I think he had one error his entire year at second base as a freshman,” Denny says.
When it comes to natural ability, Cole draws a stark contrast to himself. His first-round status notwithstanding, Cole didn’t hit for much power as an amateur nor did he consider himself graceful in the field. “I was a little grinder,” Cole says. “Everything that ever happened to me was just because of a crazy amount of work and luck and hustle. Carson came out of the womb looking really smooth and acting like a big-leaguer.” Cole isn’t knocking his younger brother’s work ethic, though. It’s just that Carson always made the hard things look easy. “He’s turning 4-6-3 double plays and jumping over the kid sliding into him in like sixth grade,” Cole says. “Flipping balls between his legs and glove-flipping double plays and doing the Jeter jump-throw in elementary school. It just didn’t make sense.”
That’s not to say that Carson was flashy just for the sake of flash. He was as fundamentally sound as any player Denny’s had. “It seems like he never, ever gets a bad hop,” Denny says. That’s not a product of luck as much as preparation, the coach says. Bad hops “happen if your feet aren’t in the right spot.”
His swing, though Law noted a loop that “might need some tightening,” is similarly well-oiled. Scouts have questioned how much power the right-handed hitter ultimately will generate, but Denny points out that Carson hit two homers in three games before his senior season was canceled. He feels that Carson has something much rarer for a high school player that power — polish. “He knows his swing probably better than any player I’ve coached,” Denny says. “The adjustments that he can make offensively, you might say, ‘Hey, you’re doing this a little bit,’ and it’s just fixed.”
And if a high school coach’s opinion is too easy to dismiss, what about that of a reigning MVP?
“What people preach to kids and what people try to get kids to learn, he already has,” says Bellinger, who has hit in the cage with Carson the last few months and regularly watches video of the young shortstop’s mechanics. “He’s got the hip drive, the looseness, the quick-twitch, the hands. He’s got all that. When he goes into pro ball, there’s obviously going to be an adjustment period because he’s going to see constant velo, but he’s already got the swing.”
Constant comparison is the burden of the younger brother. Carson has learned to be at peace with it.
Cole is a happy-go-lucky player, “the crazy goofy one,” as Carson puts it. The young shortstop often finds people are surprised that he isn’t cut from the exact same cloth. Instead of goofy, he is reserved. His demeanor on the field is more businesslike. “I’m not the crazy, annoying, talking one like he is,” Carson says, gently ribbing his big brother. “I’m just my own person.”
If Carson has an overarching goal in baseball, aside from advancing as far as he can in the sport, it’s to do it his own way. Though he is a shortstop like his brother, he’s never tried to be his brother. He never wore his hair long like Cole’s until this year, and even then he styles it differently. While he wouldn’t have been upset to have been drafted by the Pirates, he says that “in a perfect world, I would want to do my own thing.”
The lack of idol worship doesn’t bother Cole. He celebrates his brother’s differences, using a couple of famous shortstops as analogs. Cole is like José Reyes, “running all over the place, smiling, hair bouncing, acting like an idiot,” he says. By comparison, “Carson is like Troy Tulowitzki — very coordinated, very cerebral, very athletic.” (Following that comparison to its logical conclusion, we can expect the two Tucker boys to be traded for one another someday. Says Cole: “That would be insane, huh?”)
Carson’s desire to stand on his own doesn’t mean that he hasn’t taken advantage of his brother’s experience, though. Every summer while Cole was in the minors, Carson would visit — in Altoona, in Bradenton, in Charleston, West Virginia — sitting in the dugout during games and taking batting practice and grounders with the pros. “He’s lived the pro baseball lifestyle more than any other kid who’s going through the draft,” Cole says. Though Cole doesn’t feel he has much to teach his brother about his mechanics at short or at the plate, they talk often about game situations.
Then there are Carson’s other, surrogate brothers — Bellinger, Kingery and the rest. They all entered the pro ranks during a time of transition in player development, with teams using new tools to teach new techniques. Those methods are now more widespread, and Carson will begin his career already versed in them. When you hit regularly with three big-leaguers, including one of the game’s best hitters in Bellinger, you’ll pick up a few things.
That’s why, on top of all the natural gifts his brother possesses, Cole is sure that Carson is ticketed for success.
“If pro baseball is the test,” Cole says, “he’s gotten a damn good study guide from all of us.”
(Top photo: Courtesy of Mountain Pointe High School)
