Kyle Tucker has started to show some life at the plate again, but the rebound hasn’t done much to soften how Cubs fans remember the end of his run in Chicago.
Since the calendar turned to July, Tucker has put together eight hits in his last 27 plate appearances, good for a 177 wRC+ and a .429 slugging percentage. It’s the kind of stretch that looks a lot more like the player he was early in the 2025 season, when things were rolling for him in Chicago.
But that early success is hard to separate from how badly the finish went.
Tucker’s Cubs tenure closed on a sour note, and that’s the part that still hangs over any discussion of him. He was strong to begin last year, but the combination of awkward injury management and the sense that he was pulling away from the team by the end left a bad taste. The eye-rolling emoji has become the natural reaction whenever Tucker comes up, especially when he seems to gloss over how his season actually ended.
That came up again in a conversation with ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez last week, when Tucker said he normally doesn’t hit .220 for 80 games. It’s a fair thing for a player to say about himself, but it also skips right past how rough the final stretch in Chicago really was.
Over Tucker’s last 227 plate appearances with the Cubs in the regular season, he hit .225/.348/.342. His walks were the main thing keeping his wRC+ above 100, and he managed only five home runs in that span.
Gonzalez’s reporting also underlined how messy the situation became. Citing sources, he described Tucker as “reserved” during his first few months in LA, and suggested Tucker likes to work on his own and may not be especially receptive to feedback.
That doesn’t sound all that different from how things played out in Chicago. Even while Tucker was scuffling at the plate, the Cubs never seemed to have a clean answer for how to get him back on track.
Then in September, Tucker left the Cubs to seek treatment from his own personal trainer in Florida. It may not rank among baseball’s most dramatic breakups, but it was another reminder that Tucker can come off as someone looking out for himself first.
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Cubs Could Revisit A Familiar Deadline Arm With One Huge Catch
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The catch is the same one that has made him a tricky fit all along: any deal would have to account for a contract that is far from straightforward, along with the possibility that King could be headed back into free agency soon. If San Diego decides to sell, the Cubs could revisit a familiar target, but the cost in money and long-term uncertainty may be what keeps this from becoming a simple deadline fit. [Read more 🡒]