WASHINGTON — There was no relief or excitement as Kyle Tucker recounted his first home game as a Dodger on Friday.
Instead, it’s just funny words from the team’s newest slugger.
“It was fun,” she said. “I hit the first real ball well in the air.”
The question now: Will it start his 2026 season?
While nearly every star on the Dodgers’ roster struggled during a weak season opener last week, Tucker’s Dodgers debut was off to a slow start.
In his first six games, he was 4 for 23 with two RBIs and one base hit.
His nine strikeouts in that span were also uncharacteristic, belying his reputation as a floor machine.
Things changed on Friday, when Tucker went 3-for-6 with two RBIs and his first long ball of the year. And while he wasn’t the only one to find his swing suddenly in a 13-6 rout of the Washington Nationals, his resurgence may have been the biggest development of the day.
The Dodgers, after all, aren’t just making a financial gamble on Tucker, who they want for a blockbuster $240 million contract this winter.
They’re also betting on him in one of the most important spots on their roster: Hitting second as the primary line of defense for leading man Shohei Ohtani.
Already, Ohtani has seen a few hitable pitches this season. If Tucker doesn’t hit, it will be easier for teams to continue playing around him.
“He likes to hit, and he doesn’t like to walk,” Roberts said of Ohtani, who has drawn seven walks so far but seems “eager” to do more damage.
“(Tucker’s) focus and being dangerous,” added Roberts, “changes the way the team will approach Shohei.”
Tucker had never been a big threat before Friday. In the opening week of the season, he felt he missed a lot of mistakes in the area.
“I’ve been crossing pitches more than I normally do and hitting more than I normally do,” he said. “Maybe because I’ve played so bad and had so many bad stats, (it) just went downhill from there.”
So, the four-time All-Star focused Friday on “trying to get himself out of it,” getting more aggressive early in the count in hopes that something would click.
In the third inning, it led to a crucial first pitch –– sandwiched between Ohtani’s game-tying three-run homer in the first at-bat, and Mookie Betts’ next two-run blast.
In the fifth, Tucker singled again after swinging at all three pitches he saw in the batter’s box, fouling off the first two before smacking a grounder into the infield to drive in a run.
Tucker’s best swing came in the seventh, when he dodged another breaking ball from lefty Ken Waldichuk and made a cutting mistake up the middle 404 feet to right.
The explosion was unnecessary insurance at the time. But the fact that it came out to left was important for a different reason: Both Ohtani and Tucker hit from the left side of the plate, which means they’ll see more southpaws if teams start matching out of the bullpen.
“I have a good feeling he’s doing well against lefties,” Roberts said of Tucker, who has more career breaks than Ohtani but has been unsuccessful in lefty-to-lefty matchups earlier this year. “It didn’t look good early. But I think more about him, if he could get hits and hit a homer, that was still good.”
Tucker denied any idea he was pushing in his first week as a Dodger, or that the Ohtani dynamic added any extra pressure at the plate.
In his true way, he simply said that he is “trying to feel comfortable in the box and trying to line up in good places.”
On Friday, it led to his first signing performance with his new team.
The Dodgers hope that, going forward, they will see more of the same.
