Kyle Tucker's massive Game 1 homer was exactly what Dodgers haters feared most

For most of Kyle Tucker's first season in Los Angeles, the rest of baseball got to enjoy the joke.

The Dodgers handed Tucker a four-year, $240 million contract last offseason, only to watch one of baseball's most consistent stars stumble through a thoroughly underwhelming debut season in blue. He finished the regular season hitting .233/.330/.385 with 17 home runs, 70 RBI and a .715 OPS in 154 games — hardly what anyone envisioned from a player making $60 million annually on the face value of his deal.

Then October arrived. And Tucker just gave every Dodgers hater the nightmare scenario they were hoping to avoid.

With Los Angeles clinging to a 2-1 lead over the Atlanta Braves in Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday, Tucker stepped to the plate against AJ Smith-Shawver with Teoscar Hernández aboard and one out in the sixth inning. On the second pitch of the at-bat, Tucker crushed a fastball 408 feet into the right-field seats.

The two-run blast stretched Los Angeles' lead to 4-1, providing critical breathing room in an eventual 5-3 victory.

Kyle Tucker's playoff power surge is what everyone outside Los Angeles was afraid of

The Dodgers were already terrifying enough without getting the superstar version of Tucker. They won Game 1 behind six dominant innings from Tarik Skubal and homers from Hernández and Max Muncy in addition to Tucker's blast. Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman combined for relatively little damage, and Los Angeles still produced enough offense to take control of the series.

For months, Tucker looked like one of the few places where this absurdly expensive roster had actually miscalculated. The guy Los Angeles paid like one of baseball's premier players spent much of his first season getting booed by the same fans who were supposed to be celebrating another superstar addition.

But Tucker began showing signs of life before October. He posted a .969 OPS with six home runs and 13 RBI in September, and he has carried that turnaround onto the biggest stage.

Nobody ever doubted that the Dodgers had enough talent to survive a disappointing season from Tucker. That's what happens when the same lineup also includes Ohtani, Freeman, Muncy and Hernández, and when a pitching staff can hand the ball to Skubal, Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

The concern was always what would happen if Tucker eventually started looking like Tucker again. Game 1 offered the answer.

Suddenly, the player who spent six months being mocked as another example of the Dodgers throwing ridiculous amounts of money at every available superstar looks perfectly capable of becoming their latest postseason difference-maker. Tucker now has 10 career postseason home runs, and Saturday marked the first playoff game of his career in which he both homered and stole a base.

Los Angeles doesn't need Tucker to carry this lineup, but that's precisely what makes his awakening so frightening. The Dodgers were dangerous enough when their $240 million outfielder looked like a bust. If Tucker is about to make everyone forget those six months with one monster October, the rest of baseball has an entirely different problem.

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