Debunking fans' new favorite claim about Kyle Tucker after outrage over Dodgers deal

The Los Angeles Dodgers sign a star and suddenly the internet discovers a brand-new scouting report: actually, he’s kind of mid.

Kyle Tucker has become the latest victim of baseball’s most predictable emotional cycle — the one where a player is universally respected right up until the moment he puts on Dodger blue. Then the conversation flips like LA just signed a slightly above-average corner outfielder who fell into a good situation.

Dodgers getting Kyle Tucker sparked a ridiculous new lie fans keep repeating

If you want to argue you don’t like the signing — because the Dodgers already had too much, because the league’s competitive balance feels like a running joke, because it’s exhausting watching one team treat every offseason like an all-you-can-eat buffet — fine. What isn’t, is pretending Tucker is suddenly overrated because you’re mad where he landed.

The simplest debunk is the one that doesn’t care about any of that. 25.5 bWAR over the last five seasons is not “mid.” That’s actually frontline impact. You don’t luck your way into that kind of value unless you’re doing a lot of things at a high level for a long time.

Tucker is exactly the type of player people usually beg contenders to target: the all-around star who doesn’t need to hit 50 homers to be elite. He’s not flashy in a way that goes viral every night, which makes him easy to underrate if you’re only watching highlights and reading timeline jokes.

So why the “mid” talk now? Because the Dodgers added the kind of reliable, bankable two-way value that makes everyone else’s roster construction feel fragile. Tucker was brought in just to be Kyle Tucker — and on a roster that already stacks talent like it’s a hobby, that’s a nightmare.

There’s also a second layer: this is the price of being the league’s villain. The Dodgers get everyone’s best punchline. Every slump gets amplified and every big signing gets treated like a moral failing. But baseball doesn’t need to pretend Tucker is “mid” to criticize the Dodgers’ gravitational pull. Those are two different arguments — and one of them collapses the second you look at the actual résumé.

You can hate that he signed with LA. And you can hate what it means for your team. Just don’t insult your own intelligence by calling a 25.5 bWAR player “mid” because he picked the wrong zip code.