Last Updated on September 20, 2026 by Matt Musico
Fresh off back-to-back championships, the Los Angeles Dodgers didn’t need to make a big splash this past winter. But they made two — signing closer Edwin Diaz to a three-year, $69 million deal and outfielder Kyle Tucker to a four-year, $240 million contract.
Although the Dodgers are returning to the postseason and looking to become the first team to three-peat since the New York Yankees from 1998-00, Diaz (11.05 ERA in 14.2 innings) and Tucker (.729 OPS in 601 plate appearances) haven’t been major contributors to the cause.
However, Tucker has looked like a much different hitter over the past month or so, and especially over the past couple of weeks. Here’s a look at his stats over specific periods throughout this season, courtesy of Baseball Reference:
- 2026 season: .729 OPS, 17 homers, 23 doubles, 70 RBI, 88 runs scored
- Last 28 days: .946 OPS, 6 homers, 4 doubles, 13 RBI, 19 runs scored
- Last 14 days: 1.219 OPS, 5 homers, 3 doubles, 11 RBI, 14 runs scored
- Last 7 days: 1.403 OPS, 3 homers, 2 doubles, 5 RBI, 10 runs scored
All of a sudden, a dude who looked a lot like an automatic out within manager Dave Roberts’ lineup is showing signs of life with October on the horizon. Is it shocking that Tucker might’ve figured something out here?
Absolutely not. Regardless of the criticism he’s received over the past few months, the dude has shown that he’s a good hitter. He’s a four-time All-Star, a Gold Glove Award winner, a two-time Silver Slugger Award winner, and a World Series champion with the Houston Astros.
Between his MLB debut in 2018 and 2025, he’s racked up five seasons of 20-plus homers (two of 30-plus), two seasons of 100-plus RBI, five seasons of at least 4.0 bWAR, and a cumulative triple slash of .273/.358/.507. No matter how bad things got for him, odds were that he’d eventually figure something out. It’s not like he’s in the twilight of his career — he’s still just 29 years old.
So, what the heck happened?
One Area Where Kyle Tucker Made a Noticeable Improvement
There are a lot of things that matter when it comes to having a successful at-bat. But it doesn’t matter how smooth your mechanics are — if your approach and plate discipline aren’t sound, it’ll be hard to get on base at a healthy clip. Unsurprisingly, that’s something Tucker had an issue with throughout the year when comparing his plate-discipline numbers to previous years.
The table below breaks down how his chase rate (O-Swing%) and swing rate on strikes (Z-Swing%) translated into contact between 2024, 2025, and through August 17 of this season (stats courtesy of FanGraphs):
So, he was swinging more than ever and making less contact than ever (overall). It’s nice to see his swing rate on strikes continually increase, but his contact rate in that situation didn’t travel in the same direction. And all that was happening while he was chasing balls out of the strike zone at an elevated rate.
Between August 18 and September 19, here’s how those numbers have changed:
- O-Swing%: 18.4%
- O-Contact%: 60.0%
- Z-Swing%: 76.8%
- Z-Contact%: 92.4%
- Swing%: 46.4%
- Contact%: 85.7%
Unsurprisingly, these changes have led to some changes in his batted-ball profile:
- Line-drive rate: 19.9% -> 12.8%
- Ground-ball rate: 37.7% -> 33.7%
- Fly-ball rate: 42.8% -> 53.5%
- Hard-hit rate: 34.5% -> 34.9%
Even though you don’t want a drop in line-drive rate, it’s nice to see his ground-ball rate also take a dip. Plus, a maintained hard-hit rate with a dramatic rise in fly balls can help explain the surge in homers from Tucker. I also find it interesting that he’s made these positive changes at the dish while opposing pitchers have been tossing him more breaking balls.
Through August 17, Tucker had seen sliders at a 20.1% clip and curveballs at a 6.1% rate. Those numbers have increased to 25.4% and 8.8%, respectively, between August 18 and September 19. That rate at which Tucker has seen fastballs has dropped from 30.7% to 26.3% during the same period.
Is it really this simple? Yes and no. Seeing an improvement in plate discipline that more closely mirrors what he did from 2024-25 makes a lot of sense for this sudden burst of production. But we all know how a player’s mentality and confidence have a huge role in their success or failure at the plate.
Tucker arrived in Hollywood after signing a monster deal, so you’d have to think he’s felt the pressure of needing to perform up to expectations, right? As things wore on and he didn’t bust out of his slump, he could’ve started to press more at the plate and chase balls either out of the zone or on the border in hopes of making something happen.
Maybe Tucker finally got to a point where he knew this was a lost season for him individually, so he took the pressure off himself, stopped overthinking while in the batter’s box, and things started to happen again.
But that’s just an educated guess. The stats say his approach has improved. It’s showing up in his overall production over the past month, and it might be just in time for the Dodgers to make another deep run into October.
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