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By Jackson Roberts
Contributing Sports Writer
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Things have gotten shockingly bad for Chicago Cubs outfielder Kyle Tucker -- and shockingly fast.
For the first half of the season, Tucker lived up to his billing, and the Cubs were one of the hottest offenses in baseball. But the 28-year-old four-time All-Star now has just one home run since the start of July, and in his last 38 games, he's batting .189 with a .560 OPS.
It's hard to explain the root causes of Tucker's struggles, but the Cubs have to try. They've only got him under contract for a year, and all talks of his potentially lucrative free agency can be pushed to the side for now.
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On Monday, after the Cubs announced that Tucker would be benched for a couple of games to work out the kinks, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer admitted the whole team was perplexed by the star's slump, but he had a hunch on some of the root causes.
"It's not for a lack of effort from either the coaching side or on Kyle's side," Hoyer said, per Patrick Mooney of The Athletic.
"He just hasn't slugged in quite a while. The balls aren't in the air. The exit velos aren't high. I do think a lot of it is mechanical. When you look at the swing earlier in the year versus now, it's less connected, and therefore less powerful."
Tucker is still a four-win player so far this season, but based on the torrid pace he set for the first three months, the Cubs had higher hopes. And Hoyer also made it clear that the team hasn't lost its faith in their right fielder.
"He's too good a player for it not to click," Hoyer said, per Mooney. "Obviously, when there's clear mechanical changes to be made, you work really hard on those things.
"People underestimate how hard that is to make changes and then face a guy throwing 97 (mph). It's hard to make those changes in season when you fall into bad habits. You have to work on those mechanical things. But, ultimately, water usually finds its level."
Someday, Tucker will be back to doing Kyle Tucker things. The Cubs are out of the division title hunt, so it's not as though they need it to happen immediately. Yet it certainly would help the vibes in Chicago if it happened sooner rather than later.
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