Wherever it Went (and for Whatever Reason), Kyle Tucker Has His Swing Back

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

It would be pretty easy to dismiss the miniature hot streak Kyle Tucker went on this weekend. The Cubs were playing the lowly Angels, and Tucker got some very hittable pitches in the middle of the plate, from some pitchers right on the fringe of the big leagues. He had three home runs and a double, and he drove in a key run with an opposite-field single Sunday, but all of those hits came on true meatballs. 

For hitters of Tucker's caliber, though, getting your pitch is meant to be nine-tenths of the battle. Hitting that pitch hard somewhere—and often, specifically, over the fence to the pull field—is the last and easiest fight. When a guy like Tucker is going right, he crushes pitches like these. As of this weekend, it would appear that Tucker is right again.

Obviously, though, these hits were still newsworthy, because for a long time now, Tucker hasn't been right. He had four extra-base hits in Chicago's series in Anaheim. In 168 plate appearances from the start of July until the start of that series, he had had just four extra-base hits.

The problem—well, part of it—lied in his bat path. I wrote about that issue earlier this month at Baseball Prospectus. It became popular (especially in the wake of one Cubs appearance on Sunday Night Baseball) to remark on Tucker's swing speed being down slightly, but that reduction really was slight. In fact, insofar as that problem was tied speculatively to the finger injury he suffered June 1, it does a poor job of explaining his downturn—not only because that downturn didn't really begin until the second half of that month, but because his bat speed actually spiked during that window—just when his production took a nosedive.

Besides, Tucker really isn't a bat-speed slugger. That's how some players generate their power, but for many others, it comes from having the knack for efficient contact. It's about having such good feel for getting the barrel to the ball that the bat speed doesn't need to be elite for the ball to jump, and it's about doing that with loft in your swing so that the ball jumps off the bat in the air. Tucker falls into that class.

The number to track with him was always his swing plane, because it's the path his barrel takes to the ball that makes him a star. During his downturn in production, Tucker was too flat to the ball. Some of that might have been for reasons other than the finger issue. In fact, there were almost certainly multiple factors. Still, that was what was happening.

During that fallow period, Tucker had a lot of swings like this one against balls right in the middle of the zone.

This pitch isn't down, but he's on top of it, in a bad way. His bat drags through the zone too flat; he's not whipping the barrel down to carry it up through the pitch, the way he does when he's at his best.

Here's another example of the phenomenon. Different platoon matchup, different pitch, but same enticing location—and a similar unwelcome result.

The above is why Tucker survived in the lineup a long while, even as he struggled to put the barrel on the ball. He missed a great pitch to hit here, but that happens even to the best hitters, occasionally. By fouling the ball off, he wasted a great opportunity, but he didn't get himself out. Foul balls earn a batter chances to square one up and hit it straight, or to keep making good swing decisions and draw a walk. Ugly though things got, Tucker did scratch his way on base reasonably often during his profound slump. His base of skills is deep enough to keep him (almost) palatable even when he's off.

Now, though, he's clicking again. Even on this measly single Sunday, you can see it.

It's all in the tilt. Here's a screenshot of Tucker making contact on that pitch against the Cardinals:

And here's one of him connecting against Hendricks: 

He's slightly behind this ball, but because he's on the best plane for his address of the ball, he gets good wood on it and hits a slicing liner the other way, with little chance of getting caught. He's more upright, in terms of his stride, but with more lean in his body to make room to work "under [his] front side," as he and several other Cubs talk about often. 

Here's the same screenshot for his groundout against the White Sox.

And, as a capper, his contact point on the homer we looked at to start this off.

You can see, in comparing these two shots, how it helps Tucker to have (presumably) more comfort and confidence in his bottom hand. It has the important job of shearing upward to pull the bat through the zone. At any rate, though, comparing the screenshots should make clear what we also saw in that scatter plot above: more tilt means much more power potential, within the context of Tucker's swing.

This doesn't mean Tucker will automatically remain locked in for the rest of the year, let alone the playoffs. However, it's highly encouraging to see him rediscover the stellar swing that eluded him for a long stretch. Chicago needs him as the centerpiece of their lineup, and this weekend, he finally looked like that centerpiece again. Creating lift by swinging with his natural tilt, Tucker is back to driving the ball.

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[CubUgly]

He had more hard contact this weekend than he had in the whole month prior, and I don't believe that to be an exaggeration.