Kyle Tucker is the single biggest threat to the Dodgers’ three-peat bid

I’ve been big into these mini player features this MLB season, usually spawned by asking “What’s wrong with this?” or “Why is this so good?” It’s a bit like how I imagine Jerry Seinfeld used to put together his comedy specials: (exasperated hand wave) what’s the deal with this!?

In the club of featured players, though, Kyle Tucker is officially in the Platinum Rewards level you never want to be a part of: having two mini features about how you’re struggling in one season. By unofficial counts, only three players this season have twice been featured negatively: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (three times), Rafael Devers (twice, then one positive) and now Tucker. I wouldn’t go flashing this membership card around. 

Kyle Tucker is facing a baseball and PR nightmare

Tucker’s main philosophical issue, even with all his baseballical ones, is a public relations crisis. His exit from the Chicago Cubs was anything but amicable, and his body language hasn’t exactly endeared him to Los Angeles Dodgers fans who are probably desperate to root for their $240 million man. It’s not like he’s the first superstar to have a down season, but the consistent downward trend of his measurables combined with his self-defeating attitude, disgust and general malaise have turned a “slump” into a snowball rolling down Mount Everest — it is now an unstoppable boulder of doom that threatens surrounding municipalities. 

How about those measurables: well, explaining a complete offensive breakdown is harder than you’d think, not because there is nothing to point to but because there is too much. Everything is worse for Tucker in 2026; it is so by far the worst season of his career that I’m just going to throw his Savant percentiles at you and let you make your own judgements.

Don’t like Statcast data? That’s fine, how about his slash line (average/on-base/slugging)? 2025 saw a respectable .266/.377/.464, excellent stuff for a hitter with home run power. This year? .225/.325/.352. A reminder that Tucker was one of the hottest free agent hitters of the century — this was a two-time Silver Slugger and former Gold Glover who was absolute money in bank for 5.0 WAR every season. He had the plate discipline and power combination that makes diamonds. Now, he’s got nothing.

Tucker’s power outage and plate discipline blip have created a downward spiral

Every results-based metric tells you that Tucker is struggling, but the single most telling one for me is barrel rate, down more than half from 10.8 percent in 2025 to 5.3 percent in 2026. I can’t overstate how jarring that is. For a hitter of Tucker’s quality to hit half as many barrels in a season is a functionally concerning breakdown of game power, and one that’s borne out in his average exit velocity as well: down from 90.1 mph to 88.7 mph. That’s sizeable. 

A power outage is one thing, but it has also either led to or accompanied a loss in plate discipline. He’s still an above-average guy in the box but is chasing and striking out a good bit more than is typical for the Kyle Tucker. Those two features together have turned a problem into a full-blown disaster — they feed off each other, and there’s not much left of the old Tucker to eat away at.

So what does this mean for the Dodgers? Well, apart from the federal investigation into their owner, Tucker’s struggles represent the single biggest threat to the Dodgers’ three-peat dreams. Oh, the Dodgers are fine they have all these other options, you will say, but they don’t have a replacement for Tucker waiting in the wings. They have to play him, even though his negative WAR suggests some average baseball player off the street could actually have done better. If a $240 million right fielder is a black hole at the plate and in the field, that represents real risk for the reigning champs. The Dodgers? At risk? What a time to be alive.