loading . . . Kyle Tucker is Clearly in a Slump, But is There Actually Any Reason to Worry? Although the underlying reasons from the slump are not known – residual finger effects? some fatigue? mechanics a little off? flukey noise? combination of all? – it’s in arguable that Chicago Cubs outfielder Kyle Tucker is currently playing through an uncharacteristically tough stretch, and it’s been a topic of conversation for a couple weeks now. You can tell the Cubs and Craig Counsell are aware, with Tucker getting Wednesday’s game off so that he could get back-to-back days of rest together with yesterday’s off-day. The hope, I’m sure, is that a mini-reset can help Tucker straighten things back out. Kyle Tucker’s Slump and Where to Find Optimism The uncommonly consistent and effective hitter has gone just .221/.346/.319/97 wRC+ over his last 139 plate appearances going all the way back to June 26. The walk rate (15.8%) and strikeout rate (14.4%) are still both very impressive, but the quality of contact simply isn’t there. Kyle Tucker’s average exit velocity in that time is just 88.1 mph, way low for him. His 39.4% groundball rate is way up, his 32.0% hard hit rate is way down, and his barrel rate – 3.1% – is almost nonexistent. That’s why is ISO during the stretch (.097) looks more like what you might expect from a slappy, scrappy bench guy than from a superstar slugger. For his part, Kyle Tucker wasn’t going to go too deeply into what he thinks is going on, but it kinda sounds like he believes he’s just a little bit off in timing or mechanics. “I feel like I’m still swinging at the pitches I want to and taking the ones I don’t want to swing at,” he said this week, per the Sun-Times. “Pitches over the plate, I just end up fouling off, or might swing and miss at times. And then I just end up getting in worse counts, and kind of just doesn’t work out from there. But I still swing at the [right] pitches. I just need to figure out how to put those forward.” Putting it another way, via The Athletic: “If I was chasing balls in the dirt or above my head all the time, then it’s a different story. It’s just a matter of making solid contact forward. That’s kind of where I’m at. At times, you’re going to foul off pitches or swing through pitches you think you should hit. That’s kind of where it’s been. I need to figure out how to put those in play and hit them harder.” I’m having to extrapolate, but, yeah, I think those quotes are suggestive of a guy who feels his swing decisions and plate approach are fine (the numbers bear that out, by the way), but is just a little off in his mechanics or his timing. Feels like something guys just go through periodically as a season goes on, and we see them come out of it. Here’s some good news that I think points toward optimism: it’s not like a slump of this depth and length has never happened to him before. Heck, I didn’t even have to look all that hard to find a 173-PA stretch in 2023 where he hit just .252/.304/.374/84 wRC+. A month or a month and a half where the production isn’t there for Tucker has happened before quite recently, and he thereafter was a monster. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen again in 2025 for Kyle Tucker, of course, but it does mean that it’s obviously quite possible. And given the consistency of his success overall in his career at the plate, you’re much safer betting on a return to success for the 28-year-old than for further regression. Also, I just want to express some gratitude that the kind of slump from Kyle Tucker that gets us talking is … barely below league average overall in production. That’s how good he has been historically. © Brad Penner-Imagn Images https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2025/08/08/kyle-tucker-slump-2/
