Kyle Tucker's horrific playoff performance hit new low with Astros' momentum turner

One of the biggest X-factors for the Houston Astros coming into the 2024 postseason was Kyle Tucker. When he is right, Tucker is a game-changing talent, and he has a real chance to challenge for at least one MVP award in his career. However, Tucker missed a lot of time with a shin injury this season, and while his numbers were fine upon his return, it was fair to wonder how he would perform against the best of the best after dealing with a long layoff.

In some ways, those concerns proved to be valid. In the Astros' stunning opening round loss to the Tigers, Tucker did not record a hit in either game (although the Astros' offense in general did precious little as a group). However, it is very possible that Tucker's issues go beyond this year, as his momentum-crushing double play in the seventh inning of Game 2 capped what has been a truly terrible stretch of postseason play from Tucker in recent years.

Kyle Tucker's playoff hitting woes proved to be exceedingly costly for the Astros

Make that 6-for-47.

It is fair to not pile on Tucker too much here. Jose Altuve had a rare postseason where he didn't win a game singlehandedly, Jeremy Peña was a non-factor and had his own brutal GIDP in Game 2, and the Houston offense did very little to help the cause overall. Also, Tucker has had good playoff runs in the past. In the 2020 and 2021 postseasons combined, Tucker slashed .291/.331/.464 with five homers and 21 RBI in 29 games. The guy has loads of experience in the playoffs and has risen to the challenge before.

However, something has been pretty clearly amiss since the start of the 2023 postseason. Before his 0-for-3 with a walk on Wednesday against Detroit, Tucker was on a 12-playoff-game stretch of slashing .136/.269/.205 without a home run to his name. The double play that killed the Astros' rally in Game 2 was certainly brutal, but Tucker's playoff struggles long predate that fateful play. There's a chance these performances factor in during the exchange of extension numbers.

Perhaps Tucker has a flaw that really good teams know how to exploit better than the mediocre-to-bad teams can. The strikeout numbers don't really say that, but the ground ball rate very well could. It is also possible that this is too small of a sample to mean too much. It's just ... a rough patch at the worst possible time, under the brightest possible lights.

Whatever the case may be, if regular season Kyle Tucker had shown up in that series, Houston might have moved on. Unfortunately, he hasn't been that guy in the postseason for a while now.

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