Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m really relieved that Shohei Ohtani appears to have avoided serious injury after being hit by a line drive.
If you’re reading this on SI.com, click here to subscribe and receive SI:AM directly in your inbox each morning.
In today’s SI:AM:
🦅 Saquon interview
🏈 2026 QB carousel
🤠 No. 2 Texas
Reason for Tucker’s struggles?
For weeks now, Cubs fans have almost all been wondering the same thing: What’s up with Kyle Tucker? And now we know.
The Cubs paid a pretty hefty price to acquire Tucker from the Astros over the offseason, sending All-Star third baseman Isaac Paredes and two other players to Houston. During the first two months of the season, it looked like a good trade. Tucker batted .283 with a .911 OPS and 12 homers in 58 games through the end of May. The Cubs went 36–22 over that span, tied for the best record in the NL. Since then, though, Tucker’s production has fallen off a cliff. He’s batting .239 with a .730 OPS and six homers in 63 games since the start of June. And it’s been even worse lately. Since July 3, he’s batting .185 with just four extra-base hits in 36 games (three doubles and a homer). His .234 slugging percentage over that span is by far the worst in the majors. No other player with at least 150 plate appearances since July 3 has slugged worse than .310 (the Reds’ TJ Friedl).
Tom Verducci wrote a great piece (with an accompanying video) breaking down the mechanical reasons behind Tucker’s struggles and providing more evidence of how poorly he’s hit over the past two months. For example, Verducci noted that the position of Tucker’s hands was leading to a longer swing with less bat speed. Identifying what Tucker is doing wrong is one thing. Figuring out how to fix it is another.
Tucker’s prolonged slump is at least a little less inexplicable now after what the Cubs revealed on Wednesday. It turns out, Tucker fractured his hand on June 1 and has been attempting to play through it.
The injury occurred when Tucker slid into second base in a game against the Reds. Initial X-rays were negative, but further testing showed a hairline fracture at the top of his right hand, near where the pinkie and ring finger meet. Tucker sat out the team’s next game (on June 3), appeared as a pinch hitter the following day and was back in the lineup as usual on June 5.
“He was sore for a little while, but was able to play,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell told reporters Wednesday. “We did some more imaging and it showed a small fracture that was healing. And that’s it. Is it possible that this, through the playing through it, changed some things? Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s probably likely that at some point that happened. But, he wanted to play.”
It may seem irresponsible to let one of your best hitters play through a broken bone, but to be fair to the Cubs, Tucker was excellent in the immediate aftermath of the injury. Between June 5 and July 2, he batted .305 with a .942 OPS. At the same time, though, it’s hard not to draw a connection between the decision not to let Tucker’s injury heal with rest and his current predicament. It’s easy to see how discomfort in his bottom hand could lead Tucker to make subtle but costly changes to his swing.
“I know it did bother him for a while,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said earlier this month, according to MLB.com. “I don’t know whether it still bothers him, whether it created some bad habits along the way with compensating and things like that.
“There’s no question that, when you look at his numbers, it’s had an impact on him, for sure. That’s the nature of these small injuries. They can do that.”
The Cubs have given Tucker a few days off this week to try to reset. He didn’t play in either game of Tuesday’s doubleheader and also sat out on Wednesday. The team is hoping that a pause can help Tucker break some of the bad habits he’s adopted of late and that he can snap out of the slump.
With a little more than a month left in the regular season, the Cubs have some serious ground to make up in the NL Central. One obvious reason for that is the Brewers’ 14-game winning streak, during which Milwaukee stretched its lead in the division from one game to nine, but another factor is the Cubs’ prolonged mediocrity. Chicago is 37–32 since the start of June, although it did just win three out of four against the Brewers this week to cut the deficit in the division from nine games to six. If the Cubs are going to stand any chance of catching up to Milwaukee, though, they’re going to need Tucker to be more like his usual self.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Saquon Barkley wants you to forget about the so-called “running back resurgence.” He opens up to Greg Bishop about chasing 2,000 yards, winning a Super Bowl and what comes next.
- Before a single snap of the 2025 season, Conor Orr is already looking ahead to what could be the wildest NFL quarterback carousel yet in 2026.
- Sports Illustrated unveils its 2025 College Football Preseason All-Americans, featuring Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith, Texas’s Colin Simmons and other stars primed to make an impact.
- SI’s No. 2 preseason team is Texas. Bryan Fischer writes that Arch Manning and a loaded roster have the Longhorns eyeing a national championship.
- Bob Harig reports on how new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp is putting Tiger Woods to work by forming a committee of six players and three executives to reshape the Tour’s competitive model.
- In his latest Traina Thoughts, Jimmy Traina dives into how ESPN’s new app will add multiview options and other bells and whistles just in time for college football.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. Julio Rodríguez’s homer on a pitch way below the zone. It looked like something Vladimir Guerrero would have done in the ’90s.
4. Giancarlo Stanton’s pinch-hit two-run homer in the 10th inning to give the Yankees the lead over the Rays. New York has hit 14 homers in its last two games.
3. Paige Bueckers’s 44 points against the Sparks. That’s a WNBA rookie record and the most points by a guard since Riquna Williams in 2013. (L.A. won at the buzzer on a floater by Kelsey Plum, though.) 2. Fernando Tatis Jr.’s leaping home run robbery.
1. An even better catch in the outfield by Blue Jays prospect Gabriel Martinez.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Cubs Reveal Slumping Star Kyle Tucker Was Injured Months Ago.
