Kyle Tucker’s first season in Los Angeles has turned into one of the more baffling storylines the Dodgers are dealing with, and the split at the center of it is hard to ignore.
On the surface, Tucker’s numbers are fine enough: a .230/.326/.367 line overall after signing a $240 million deal. But the deeper dive is where things get strange.
At Dodger Stadium, he has hit just .189/.286/.272 this season. On the road, that jumps to .269/.362/.458.
That kind of divide stands out on its own, and it stands out even more because players are usually supposed to be more comfortable at home. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the club still doesn’t have a clean explanation for it, and Tucker isn’t the only one whose home-road numbers have raised eyebrows.
“Freddie’s are pretty stark as well, I think Mookie’s are stark. Teo, I think stark,” Roberts said. “There’s a lot of guys that have been pointed out to me, and I don’t know the answer.”
For Tucker specifically, Roberts said the Dodgers are actively trying to figure out how to help him get loose at home. With Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández, though, Roberts sounded more inclined to let the numbers even themselves out.
“I think with Teo and Freddie, I assume they’ve hit well at home before so it’s maybe an outlier kind of thing and hopefully it sort of corrects itself,” he began. “With Kyle, I don’t know the answer.
We are digging. He says he likes it here when I talk to him, but obviously the performance hasn’t reflected that.
But I don’t know the answer.”
The Dodgers already made one notable move last week, sitting Tucker in an effort to find some kind of reset. He was back in the lineup for all three games against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field, and the expectation is that he won’t be parked for long with a three-game home series against the Pittsburgh Pirates starting Friday.
Roberts said the decision to give Tucker another day off came after he saw a player who looked more frustrated than usual during the homestand. The manager felt a breather was the right call.
“I think that just kind of reactions to at-bats, whether it’s the first at-bat of a game, and you’re really showing emotion, that’s a tell, from a guy who doesn’t show a lot of emotion,” Roberts said. “So those things, as they build up, for me, that tells me that you need to watch a baseball game and kind of take some of that frustration and put it to the side.”
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