Kyle Tucker's Swing Has Clicked into Place, and He's Poised for a Playoff Power Binge

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images

It wasn't just that Kyle Tucker went 0-3 in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series Tuesday. That much, you could forgive. Tucker only made it back from the injured list for the final three games of the regular season, after missing most of September with a calf strain. In the course of going 1-11 in that series against the Cardinals, Tucker found some solace in the fact that his timing and his mental approach still felt right. That optimism wasn't wholly unjustifiable, either. It's great to be on time at the plate, and difficult to do so coming back cold from three weeks on the shelf. He also drew a walk during the games, so he was making at least some good swing decisions.

On the other hand, his swing certainly didn't look fully restored. It was fair to say that he was seeing the ball well and reacting correctly, but the movement of the barrel wasn't as controlled or fluid as it had been for much of the season—and certainly not as much so as over the last 10 days or so before his injury, when he seemed to finally shake the slump that swallowed his summer. He wasn't right, even if he claimed to feel (basically) right.

That showed up in ugly fashion in Tucker's Cubs playoff debut Tuesday, when he went 0-3 with a strikeout even as the Cubs won, 3-1. He didn't make solid contact, and the under-the-hood metrics shouted out the problem: deficient bat speed and no tilt on the swing, which made his timing lousy even when he correctly identified pitches. It was a nadir; it seemed to prove what the weekend had hinted at. It was fair to worry whether Tucker would be able to make a meaningful contribution to the team's effort to push deeper into the postseason.

In Game 2, though, he figured something out. Interestingly, the first sign of hope came when he struck out swinging, in the fourth.

Yes, Dylan Cease flat-out beat Tucker there. He threw him a fastball at the top edge of the zone in a 3-2 count, at 99.7 miles per hour. Cease's fastball has big carry, too, so it appeared to rise at the end for Tucker. He swung somewhat under it. It was an unfortunate result. It was also a sign that he was in the right mindset, and had the right swing ready.

You don't want Kyle Tucker swinging the way he can swing to touch that pitch. If a pitcher successfully executes that pitch, Tucker should strike out; you have to be ok with that. Sometimes, the other guy wins. If Tucker were unable to pull the trigger, or seemed so late he was handcuffed by the velocity of Cease, that would be trouble. It would also be trouble if he'd swung and hit a flyout, which was the best-case scenario for the combination of that pitch's speed, its movement, its location, and Tucker's swing.

Whiffing on it, instead, was a sign that Tucker was ready to cover the whole strike zone and to hit any of Cease's likely offerings in that spot. It was a sign that he could get the hands moving quickly enough to swing competitively. And it showed some tilt in his swing, as opposed to that hideous flatness that became his habit from late June through mid-August. 

Tucker shot a single to center at the end of that loss to the Padres, continuing the positive trend and moving it into the realm of results. In the bottom of the second inning Thursday, he also got the barrel to a high fastball from Yu Darvish, scalding the ball to right field.

When the pitcher only throws 93 and doesn't quite hit their spot, you'd love to punish them with an extra-base hit—but one thing at a time. Darvish's pitch was still up in the zone, and Tucker still got around it nicely. The next time he stepped to the plate, he delivered a third straight single, this one to left field.

Jeremiah Estrada, like Cease, will climb the ladder on you in terms of both location and velocity. Locked in on the fact that the Padres were trying to get him out with high heat, though, Tucker got good wood on them. How?

Firstly, after plunging into the mid-60s on most of his swings over the weekend and even in Game 1, Tucker is swinging faster the last two games. He gained some confidence from a first look at the Padres' playoff pitching staff, and immediately unlocked more of his bat speed. Below, you can see the ugly valley of the previous few days, and the climb created by his barrel accelerating over the final two games of the San Diego series.

We've discussed this before, though. Bat speed really won't tell the story, where Tucker is concerned. He's not elite in terms of sheer velocity. When he's going well, he's elite in his ability to hit the ball squarely, and to create some lift on it. To get there, he needs to catch the ball while working uphill and he needs to get around it just a bit. He hadn't been doing that, prior to Wednesday. Over the last several plate appearances he's taken, he has. He's also found the tilt in his swing that allows him to create loft without getting too early and rolling over on the ball.

You might notice that the swing tilt is still down, relative to lots of recent stretches, even after its uptick in the last two days. That's not a reason to worry, though; it's just him reacting to what teams are doing to him. His swing plane is flatter than average the last two days, but that's because the Padres fed him a steady diet of upper-90s heaters at the top of the zone. You can't hit that kind of pitch with a 38° swing plane. You need the flatter version of your best swing, without losing whatever baseline tilt is an ineluctable part of that swing's identity. Tucker is striking that balance gorgeously over the last handful of times he's come to the plate, against great pitchers who had a plan to force him to catch up to them upstairs.

The Padres pitching staff, as a group, is exceptionally good at hammering the top edge of the strike zone with heaters. For all the things they do well, that's not true of the Brewers. Tucker will see a wider variety of pitches during the NLDS than he did this wek, and in a wider variety of locations—including some down and out over the plate. With the swing he's honed by forcing himself not to get too flat against high fastballs in the high 90s, Tucker will be ready to punish those offerings from Milwaukee hurlers. He's healthy, now, and he's back in rhythm. Perhaps most importantly, though, he's also ironed out the kinks that remained in his swing as recently as Tuesday. That's a huge development for a Cubs team aspiring to a deep run in these playoffs; Seiya Suzuki shouldn't have to be a one-man slugging band in this round.

View full article