Kyle Tucker fouls ball off leg, departs early

Tucker is back in right field and hitting fifth after sitting out Sunday’s series finale against the Giants with a right leg contusion. It doesn’t appear to be a significant concern heading into the home stretch of the regular season. The 29-year-old former fantasy star has shown some real signs of life recently, hitting .313 (15-for-48) with five homers and one steal over his last 15 games.

Tucker made an early exit from Saturday’s game after fouling a ball off of his right leg. The injury isn’t believed to be serious, but Tucker was still sore on Sunday so the Dodgers opted to give him an extra day off to rest. Enrique Hernandez will start in his place and will bat eighth against Giants’ left-hander Matt Wilkinson.

Tucker came up just a triple shy of the cycle, and he has never actually hit for the cycle in his career. In September of last year, he came a double shy of hitting for one against the Marlins. Tucker’s first-inning home run off Brady Singer was his 16th of the season to go along with 69 RBI. He came into this game hitting .193/.300/.369 in 52 games in the second half. He hasn’t been striking out, and he has a 7.2 percent barrel rate over that timeframe, so maybe he can get it going before the playoffs begin.

De Paula takes a seat with veteran Teoscar Hernández at DH and Kyle Tucker in right field to face Cincinnati southpaw Andrew Abbott. The 21-year-old phenom went 0-for-5 out of the leadoff spot on Tuesday and is hitting just .143 (2-for-14) with one homer, three RBI and one steal in five games since being promoted from Double-A Tulsa last week. The fact that he’s hitting some initial turbulence isn’t a surprise at all considering his relative inexperience while facing big-league arms for the first time. He has an extremely bright future ahead of him as an all-around fantasy contributor. The big question is whether he’ll have a spot with Los Angeles once Shohei Ohtani (biceps, knee) is ready to return from the injured list next week.

He also picked up his 11th steal of the year. He’s been perfect there, so it sure would be nice if he’d been a little more aggressive. Since the start of 2024, he’s been caught just three times in 50 steal attempts.

Tucker’s sacrifice fly in the third inning brought home Tommy Edman to give the Dodgers their first run of the night, but that was just the start of a big night for Tucker. In the top of the seventh inning, Tucker stepped up with the bases loaded and sent a slider from Marlins reliever Cade Gibson 413 feet into the stands for a grand slam, pushing the Dodgers’ lead to 6-1. Tucker has now tallied three hits in back-to-back nights and is slashing .318/.360/.864 in his last seven games.

It took facing a catcher, but Tucker collected his first three-hit game of the second half. He was 10-for-81 with one homer in his previous 24 games, even though he had a nice 13/12 K/BB ratio during the span.

It was Tucker’s first homer since August 8, and just the 12th of the season for the 29-year-old. It hasn’t hurt the Dodgers much, but Tucker has been one of the biggest disappointments in baseball in his first season in Los Angeles with a slash of just .226/.327/.359.

They’ll take a seat against LHP Chris Sale. Alex Call will draw the start and bat seventh for Tucker; this appears to just be a routine day off. Enrique Hernández is playing third for Muncy and Muncy appears to be in some danger of losing at-bats against lefties now that Hernández is back.

Tucker’s miscue Sunday was a little embarrassing, but he had a solid excuse while fighting the sun. Tonight’s drop was just bad, and it was paired with another poor offensive game, this one in Coors. As rough as Tucker’s year has been, he’s been just fine on the road; he came into tonight hitting .275/.371/.469 away from Dodger Stadium. Denver provided no immediate reprieve for him, however, as he turned in his seventh straight hitless game.