Kyle Tucker's recent Dodgers surge is smokescreen fans shouldn't fall for

The Los Angeles Dodgers clinched the NL West for the 14th time in their last 15 seasons with an 8-2 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday. Justin Wrobleski pitched three perfect innings, Freddie Freeman continued to heat up, Miguel Rojas hit just his fourth homer of the year, but the Dodgers' top performer, not just in the series finale, but over the Dodgers' last 10 games was Kyle Tucker.

He homered in his first at-bat on Thursday to give the Dodgers an early 2-0 lead. By the end of the game, he'd gone 4-for-5 with the homer, two doubles, three RBI, and ended up a triple shy of the cycle.

After a long season of struggles and fans and writers alike wondering aloud if the Dodgers made a huge mistake signing him to his absurd four-year, $240 million contract, Tucker seems to have turned back into his old self at just the right time.

The Dodgers, while still heavy favorites to win the World Series, have a whole host of weaknesses their upcoming postseason opponents can (and will) identify and exploit. But Tucker earning back his old King Tuck moniker in LA would add an extra bite the lineup expected but hasn't seen most of this season.

However, there's a caveat to all of this that Dodgers fans shouldn't ignore. LA has played seven of their last 10 games against the Reds, one of the worst teams in the National League.

Kyle Tucker's newfound success for the Dodgers has to be tempered by one unavoidable fact

Before coming into this nine-game stretch, Tucker hit .143 with a .628 OPS against the Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals, and Washington Nationals. All are inferior opponents to the Dodgers and some even had worse records than the Reds by the time they saw the Dodgers. But none had the NL or AL's second-worst run differential like Cincinnati.

Going into this series, Cincinnati had a staggering -148 run differential. Their pitching staff's collective ERA is 4.87 and WHIP is 1.45, the third-worst in baseball in both categories. Of the four starters the Dodgers faced during this series, only Andrew Abbott had an ERA under 5.00 (4.78).

The Dodgers' last nine games should be a greater test of Tucker's mettle, and will prove whether or not this hot streak was purely incidental. Six inter-division games against the San Francisco Giants and three against the San Diego Padres are surely going to give the Dodgers more grief, as games against those teams often do, and may expose this recent surge as being nothing more than a flash in the pan.

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