Kyle Tucker hits first Dodgers home run. Can it kick-start his season?

WASHINGTON –– There was neither relief nor elation as Kyle Tucker recounted his first home run as a Dodger on Friday.

Instead, just a self-depracating quip from the team’s understated new slugger.

“It was nice,” he said. “First actual ball I’ve hit in the air well.”

The question now: Whether it will kick-start his 2026 season?

While just about every superstar in the Dodgers’ loaded lineup struggled during last week’s lackluster season-opening homestand, Tucker’s Dodgers debut had gotten off to a particularly slow start.

In his first six games, he was just 4-for-23 with two RBIs and one extra-base hit.

His nine strikeouts in that span were also uncharacteristic, running counter to his reputation as an on-base machine.

Things changed on Friday, when Tucker went 3-for-6 with two RBIs and his first long ball of the year. And though he wasn’t the only one who suddenly found his swing in a 13-6 rout of the Washington Nationals, his resurgence might have been the day’s biggest development.

The Dodgers, after all, aren’t just making a financial gamble in Tucker, whom they wooed with a blockbuster $240 million contract this winter.

They are also betting on him in one of the most important spots of their lineup: Batting second as the primary line of protection for superstar leadoff man Shohei Ohtani.

Already, Ohtani has been seeing few hittable pitches this season. If Tucker doesn’t hit, the easier it will be for teams to keep pitching around him.

“He likes to hit, and doesn’t like to walk,” Roberts said of Ohtani, who has drawn seven walks to this point but has also looked “anxious” to do more damage.

“(Tucker) getting on base and being a threat,” Roberts added, “changes how a team is going to approach Shohei.”

Tucker hadn’t been much of a threat before Friday. During the season’s opening week, he felt he was missing too many mistakes in the zone.

“I’ve been kind of fouling off pitches over the plate more than I normally do and striking out more than I normally do,” he said. “Probably because I fouled off some pitches and got into worse counts, (it went) just downhill from there.”

Thus, the four-time All-Star focused Friday on “trying to swing myself out of it,” getting more aggressive early in counts hoping that something would click.

In the third inning, it led to a pivotal first-pitch single –– sandwiched between Ohtani’s game-tying three-run homer the at-bat prior, and Mookie Betts’ go-ahead two-run blast the next.

In the fifth, Tucker singled again after swinging at all three pitches he saw in the strike zone, fouling off the first two before smoking a grounder through the infield to drive in a run.

Tucker’s best swing came in the seventh, when he ambushed another first-pitch breaking ball from left-handed reliever Ken Waldichuk and hammered the center-cut mistake 404 feet to right.

The blast was superfluous insurance at that point. But the fact it came off a lefty was important for a different reason: Both Ohtani and Tucker hit from the left side of the plate, meaning they’ll see plenty of southpaws when teams begin matching up out of the bullpen.

“I have a good idea that he does OK versus a left-hander,” Roberts said of Tucker, who has more neutral career splits than even Ohtani but was hitless in left-on-left matchups previously this year. “Hasn’t looked great early. But I think more for him, that he can get some hits and still hit a homer, that was still good.”

Tucker refuted any notion he was pressing in his first week as a Dodger, or that the Ohtani dynamic has added any extra pressure at the plate.

In his matter-of-fact way, he said he is simply “trying to feel comfortable in the box and trying to put a swing on good pitches.”

On Friday, it resulted in his first signature performance with his new team.

The Dodgers are hoping that, moving forward, they will see plenty more like it.