Dodgers columnist making excuses for Kyle Tucker isn't helping the situation

The Los Angeles Dodgers have yet to make the call on Kyle Tucker. He's been unavailable since he left Monday's opener against the Minnesota Twins in the second inning with back spasms.

Tucker said the next day that he's "pretty confident" he'll be able to avoid the IL. He swung a bat on Wednesday and will get Thursday off before the Dodgers head to San Diego to face the Padres on Friday.

LA's offense has been totally fine without Tucker. They pummeled the Twins, 12-3, on Tuesday, and then eked out a 4-3 win to complete the sweep despite a rocky outing for Shohei Ohtani (and Dalton Rushing). The roster was built exactly for this. Lose one superstar, you've still got ... however many more lying in wait.

But Tucker wasn't contributing much around the time he got hurt anyway. In his last seven games, he hit .227 with a .684 OPS — and that represented an improvement. He hit .196/.586 in his last 15 games and .196/.616 in his last 30. He's worth 0.8 bWAR and 0.6 fWAR. This is the guy the Dodgers decided to give $60 million a year?

Dylan Hernández of the California Post made a plea to the Dodgers on Tuesday: put Tucker on the IL regardless of how severe his back issue is. Give him the mental break.

All due respect ... you've gotta be kidding us with this.

Kyle Tucker deserves little sympathy when the Dodgers are paying him $60 million a year

Tucker's struggles at the plate haven't been for lack of caring or trying, Hernández argues. In fact, he might "care too much." Take it easy on poor, poor Kyle Tucker, Hernández pleads, for he is just a sad multi-millionaire who's super bummed he can't contribute. Blah, blah, blah.

Players have talked about the transition to the Dodgers being a tough one. There's a lot of external pressure from the media and from fans, and most of these players have obscenely rich contracts to live up to. Tanner Scott was brave enough to admit it plainly, but it feels fair enough to speculate that it happened with Michael Conforto last year and might be happening with Tucker this year, too.

While Scott and Conforto's performances were still unacceptable, it was a little easier to empathize with them than Tucker, who is baseball's true AAV record holder. Forgive us if we don't lose sleep over whether or not this guy gets a mental reset.

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