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Kyle Tucker hit another home run Friday night as the Dodgers beat the Mets 4-3, per the LA Times. It’s back-to-back games with a long ball for Tucker — a welcome sight after a season that, frankly, has not gone the way anyone in Dodger blue hoped when we signed him.

Tucker came to Los Angeles last offseason on a massive $240-million deal, the kind of contract you hand out to a player you believe is a perennial MVP candidate. And the résumé backed it up. In Houston, Tucker was one of the most complete players in baseball — a lefty bat with power to all fields, elite defense in the outfield, and a track record of destroying pitching in October. His 2023 and 2024 campaigns were outstanding, and the expectation was that he’d slot in as the backbone of our lineup alongside Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts.

That hasn’t happened yet. Tucker has struggled for much of this season, with his numbers sitting well below the standards he set in Houston. The power has been inconsistent, the average has dipped, and there have been stretches where he’s looked like a different hitter entirely. Whether it’s been adjustment to a new league city, mechanical tweaks, or just the kind of rough patch every great hitter goes through, the results simply haven’t matched the price tag. It’s been one of the quieter disappointments of our 2026 season.

Which is exactly why this little two-game stretch matters. Seeing Tucker drive the ball out of the park in consecutive games — even if it’s just two games — is the kind of thing that can spark a second-half turnaround. We’ve seen it before with elite hitters. They don’t gradually climb out of a slump; they flip a switch. Tucker has the talent and the track record to do exactly that. The swing Friday night apparently had some of that vintage Tucker violence to it, and the Dodgers need that version of him desperately as we push toward October.

The Dodgers’ corner outfield production has been a topic of conversation all season, and Tucker getting right would go a long way toward solving that problem without needing to make a panic move at the deadline. We have enough pieces in the outfield prospect pipeline to fuel trades if needed (and I still think we will be aggressive), but the best trade deadline acquisition is often the star you already have finally playing like himself. Tucker homering again doesn’t erase the struggles, but it’s a better sign than anything we’ve seen in a while. Two swings don’t make a trend, but they can start one.

Source(s): Staff (LA Times) | First reported: July 26, 2026 2:37 AM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers