CHICAGO — It doesn’t take any inside information or an advanced understanding of the science of hitting to know that something with Kyle Tucker is off. Cubs manager Craig Counsell simply acknowledged the obvious when he finally decided to give the All-Star outfielder a break.
How long this reset will last is unclear.
“We’ll see how it goes,” said Tucker, who stayed on the bench for Tuesday afternoon’s 6-4 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers and sat out a 4-1 Game 2 win as the Cubs swept a split doubleheader at Wrigley Field.
What, exactly, is wrong with Tucker is also uncertain. Counsell, who outlined his ideas in a Sunday night conversation with Tucker, remained similarly vague about this shutdown when he spoke with the media: “We’ll see where that goes.”
The situation has turned ugly, with Tucker getting booed at Wrigley Field for not producing and not running to first base. His numbers since the beginning of July are disappointing and conspicuous, especially given the current seven-game gap in the National League Central between the Cubs and Brewers. It’s also out of character for an understated player to be slamming his bat and helmet with this kind of frequency.
“You see the physical stuff — that’s easy — it’s a lot of groundballs,” Counsell said. “But we’ve seen the mental struggle, too. Sometimes it results in body language and things like that. We see it in each other when we’re struggling as people. We try to help. We try to support. We try to motivate, in any way we can. But like the mechanics thing, there’s no perfect answers.”
The questions kept coming at Tucker during a rapid-fire session with reporters at his locker that lasted less than five minutes. After months of Cubs fans clamoring for the big-market franchise to sign him to a long-term contract extension, some have turned on him loudly.
“It’s fine,” Tucker said. “I still got to do my job, regardless of cheers or boos or whatever. Obviously, I got to do a better job.”
“Regardless you still gotta run down the line whether you’re out by 50 feet or not. It’s just a little tough right now.”
Kyle Tucker on not running out a ground ball to first base. pic.twitter.com/DNG2MxUDan
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) August 19, 2025
Those responsibilities include eliminating the low-energy reactions to all those groundballs hit to the right side of the infield. Tucker — a hitter whose left-handed swing once drew comparisons to Ted Williams’ approach — has one home run and a 46.5 percent ground-ball rate in the second half.
“It’s kind of exhausting,” Tucker said. “I don’t know how many times I’ve rolled over to first or second. Regardless, you still got to run down the line, whether you’re out by 50 feet or not.”
Tucker’s lack of power has created some doubts about his current fitness. “I’m fine,” he said.
The event often cited is the headfirst slide in June that jammed his right ring finger, though that turned out to be his best month as a Cub (.982 OPS) to this point. Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer suggested the injury might have inadvertently led to some bad habits.
“I don’t know, I can’t really point to one thing,” Tucker said. “If I could, I would have already fixed that.”
Curiously, on the same morning that Counsell said Tucker was “healthy and available,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy appeared on 670 The Score and answered a general question about the state of the Cubs by declaring, “I think Tucker’s hurt.”
“I don’t have any information, but Tucker’s not the same,” Murphy said on the Cubs’ flagship radio station.
Murphy previously served as Counsell’s bench coach in Milwaukee and college coach at Notre Dame. “(Tucker’s) hurt, and he’s playing through it. He’s such a class kid that he probably doesn’t mention it to anyone. That kid, I don’t know him. But everything I hear, and watching him play the game, he’s first class.
“He wouldn’t complain if something’s bothering him because he doesn’t want an excuse. He feels that responsibility. But I would say there’s probably something physically going on there.”
On the mental side of the game, it’s natural to wonder how much the timing of this career-worst slump is weighing on Tucker, who entered the season as this winter’s No. 1 projected free agent.
“I just care about winning today’s game and helping out with that,” Tucker said. “Regardless of what happens later, it’s not a factor right now.”
The outside noise did not seem to bother Tucker when he got traded from the Houston Astros last offseason.
Counsell also dismissed the pressure narrative and potential impact on Tucker’s next contract: “That’s kind of a story we all tell ourselves about what’s going on. You can’t say, ‘Yes, that’s it.’ It’s a hard one to answer.”
In putting context around the prior struggles of young hitters such as Pete Crow-Armstrong and Matt Shaw, Counsell has emphasized that all major-league hitters are constantly making adjustments. It’s just that fans and the media put an outsized focus on the learning curve for rookies. In reality, even a player as accomplished as Tucker has to keep adapting and searching.
“The at-bats have borne this out,” Counsell said. “Kyle’s still doing a pretty good job of swinging at the right pitches and getting himself to the places he wants. His first at-bat Sunday was kind of like the defining thing of what he’s feeling. Because he got himself to a 3-1 (count and) got a fastball where he wanted it. And hit a groundball.
“As a player, (you’re thinking): ‘I don’t know why that keeps happening. I did exactly what I wanted to do for four pitches. I did my job really well and got myself a pitch to hit, and I got the same result.’ Mechanically, what he’s trying to feel, what he wants to feel, it’s not happening when he gets in the box.
“There’s separation from what he wants, what’s happening and what he thinks he feels. You just try to keep working on that. It’s a little thing that puts it back in place. It’s probably a simple thing that puts it back in place. It doesn’t even have to be a successful swing. It could be a foul ball that puts it back in place.
“The question we’re asking ourselves now is: ‘Does some time off kind of get him away from the thoughts that he’s going to have and then maybe create some new thoughts?’”
Owen Caissie drives his first career homer the other way 💪 pic.twitter.com/Jiv9wKKTGg
— MLB (@MLB) August 19, 2025
Though Tucker took a breather in Tuesday’s Game 1, Owen Caissie took advantage of the opportunity. Recently promoted from Triple-A Iowa, Caissie lined a two-run single into right field, launched his first major-league homer over the wall in left-center field and made some difficult catches in the right-field corner.
In Game 2, Caissie chipped in with an RBI single off Milwaukee starter Brandon Woodruff, while Willi Castro, a defensive substitution, made a spectacular throw from right field to home plate in the seventh inning to turn a potential sacrifice fly into a double play. As Counsell likes to say, it takes the entire roster.
But the big idea remains the same, ever since that blockbuster win-now trade. The Cubs need Tucker to perform to qualify for the playoffs and bring October baseball back to Wrigley Field.
“Kyle is one of the best hitters of our generation,” pitcher Matthew Boyd said. “We all go through hard times. But that’s why there’s 26 of us in there. We pick each other up. Kyle will do what he needs to do. There’s not a worry in the world about him.
“He picked us up, at times, in the first half of this year. Let’s not forget that. Where we are this year is because of him. We got his back. Not a doubt in the world. We have all the trust in him. Everyone goes through rough patches. That’s why we’re a team. Just keep going forward.”
(Photo: Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)