How poor was Kyle Tucker’s regular season? So poor that fans of the Toronto Blue Jays, watching Vladimir Guerrero Jr. go underwater, consoled themselves with: “Could be worse … Kyle Tucker could have signed here.”

Tucker was the marquee free-agent position player last winter, turning down a longer, bigger contract offer from the Blue Jays (reportedly 10 years, $350 million) to sign a four-year, $240-million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He proceeded to have his worst offensive season, setting career lows in average and OPS and failing to break the 20-home-run mark for the first time. His OPS-plus was below league average and his bWAR came in under 1.0.  People wondered whether he even liked the game. Shoot, he could have been forgiven for asking that question of himself. 

But none of that matters now that the National League Division Series is here.

The Dodgers, of course, have played a ton of baseball in the last six years, winning the World Series three times — including back-to-back wins in 2024 and 2025 — while being eliminated in six games in the 2021 NLCS. A guy like Will Smith has played 72 playoff games since 2019. They are the oldest team in the majors, so Tucker was supposed to be a guy who could put a little extra spring in their step. Maybe be a little more excited and motivated. That was one of the ways the New York Yankees helped their core during their glory years. It was one of the reasons Pat Gillick overhauled the Blue Jays between 1992 and 1993.

It still might work out for Tucker, whose walk and chase rate held mostly true to form. He hit six of his 17 homers in September, including in back-to-back games twice, flirted with a cycle in two games and posted his best offensive month of the season. The Dodgers believed that a hand injury suffered in the second half of the 2025 season while he was with the Chicago Cubs got into his head and, by extension, his swing. The renaissance was key to a nice run to the finish line by the Dodgers, dovetailing nicely with Mookie Betts’ terrific month and helping alleviate some of the concern created by Freddie Freeman’s shockingly bad September and Shohei Ohtani’s biceps and knee issues.

The Atlanta Braves were the only one of the four wild-card survivors to need a third game, advancing with a 6-2 win........

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