Even Los Angeles Dodgers fans had to admit that the $240 million contract team gave Kyle Tucker this offseason was an egregious and even undeserved amount of money. Sure, Tucker is very good — he was inarguably the best free agent position player on an otherwise weak market — but should he really be making $9 million more a year than Juan Soto, and only $10 million less than Shohei Ohtani? Probably not.
But, ultimately, it meant very little to the front office and even less to Dodgers fans. Andrew Friedman basically has carte blanche, and why should fans concern ourselves with how much is being spent as long as the player is helping the team? Only problem is: Tucker hasn’t really been helping the team.
Through 57 games, he’s hitting .238 with a .722 OPS and just four homers. Dave Roberts has already thrown him all over the lineup trying to figure out where he’s most comfortable, but moving him more regularly into the cleanup spot hasn’t exactly worked wonders for his bat. The Dodgers will occasionally see glimpses of a bat starting to get hot, but it’ll cool back down just as quickly.
He had a decent game on Sunday, going 2-for-4 with an RBI single. Roberts said that Tucker “looked [like] more of who he is.”
Dodgers outfielder Kyle Tucker seems to be going through an identity crisis
Should a veteran player who is being paid $60 million a year for his ability to put up consistent 5 WAR seasons be going through this dramatic a learning curve?
Signing with the Dodgers means inviting a new kind of pressure. Tanner Scott even admitted that the magnitude of his four-year, $72 million contract weighed on him throughout his career-worst 2025 season.
There were concerns going in about how Tucker, a more low-key personality, would adjust to life under the very bright lights at Dodger Stadium. A new team, a deal that’s hard to live up to, and the continuation of a bad second half in 2025 could be compounding to create a mental block that’s hard to break through.
It would take a lot for the Dodgers to truly ever regret a contract given how little they care about how much they spend, and Tucker has been far from the same sunk cost as Michael Conforto was last year. But we challenge any member of the Dodgers front office to tell us that they’re not at least a little concerned about how contract is going to age given how his first season is going.
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