I decided to add an extra Draft Prospect Watch article because a player has been in the news and he has a connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Baseball America recently received updated scouting reports that were gathered prior to the stoppage in play and one of their biggest movers in this draft is Carson Tucker, the 18-year-old brother of Cole Tucker.
The younger Tucker is attending the same school as his brother, Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, Arizona. He’s also playing the same shortstop position that his older brother manned up until 2014. Carson has a college commitment to Texas. He was ranked 74th by BA until they received their latest reports. Tucker moved up 15 spots in Friday’s update and they now believe that he could be a second round pick. The Pirates have the 44th overall pick, which might be considered a bit of a reach, but they don’t pick again until the 80th overall pick. So if they have interest in him, then he’s going to need to be selected earlier than 80th.
Tucker was rated lower earlier because he didn’t have the cleanest swing and it needed to be overhauled. He made those adjustments over the off-season and scouts were clearly impressed with the results. Fangraphs had him rated 78th early this year, while boting that he needed to overhaul his swing. So you would assume that the successful changes would help his case to move up their rankings. Tucker also grew a bit more, with a late spurt pushing him to 6’2″, after standing less than 6’0″ tall as a junior according to BA. At 180 pounds, he still has room to fill out.
Carson shows a lot of similarities to Cole. The best tools here are speed and the arm, and he projects to remain at shortstop. He’s a line drive hitter, with potential to add power. Those are basically the same tools as his brother at the time. The one difference here with projection is that Cole turned 18 a month after being drafted, while Carson turned 18 in January. Not a big difference, but it’s something teams look for with younger players. What helps Carson is that he had the late growth spurt, so you wouldn’t expect him to grow into that added frame yet.
During one of his last games before the stoppage of play, Tucker hit a double and two homers.
Here are some videos, starting with an older one from Prospect Live before the swing adjustment (I couldn’t find a recent one). This was actually filmed on Cole’s 23rd birthday.
Here’s BA’s video, which was from last summer as well
Meet Carson Tucker.
He's the younger brother of @Pirates SS Cole Tucker, and a strong prospect in his own right.
He jumped 15 more spots in today's BA 300 update.
Here's why: https://t.co/AUnK0sdB9r pic.twitter.com/2MpdZDqFom
— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) April 4, 2020
You can check out the other 19 draft-eligible players we have profiled here in this link.
