Tucker still navigating through difficult start

HOUSTON -- Astros manager Dusty Baker admitted that struggling right fielder Kyle Tucker may need a day off in the near future. Baker is reluctant to give him one this weekend against the Blue Jays, considering they’re one of the best teams in the American League.

While the Astros keep searching for signs of optimism, Tucker’s early-season slump deepened in Friday night’s 4-3 loss to the Blue Jays at Minute Maid Park with an 0-for-4 performance that included a ninth-inning swinging strikeout.

Tucker, the only Astros player to start each of the team’s first 13 games, is 4-for-46 (.087) with 11 strikeouts to start the season. Since homering twice in the second game of the season on April 8 in Anaheim, he’s 2-for-38 and will carry an 0-for-18 funk into Saturday’s game against Toronto.

“Sooner or later [he’ll get a day off], but this is too big of a series,” Baker said. “We’ll probably see how he does before we go on the road, and it might be on the road. He hit one ball good today. I don’t know. We’ll see.”

Tucker grounded out to the right side of the infield in his first two at-bats on Friday, the second of which stranded two runners in the third inning.

In the sixth, he struck a long fly ball to left-center field that was caught just to the right of the nook where the Crawford Boxes jut out towards the field. The ball traveled 358 feet and would have been a homer were it hit 10 feet to the left. He came to bat in the ninth, with the tying run at first, and struck out on a 98.5 mph fastball by Jordan Romano that was off the plate.

“When you’re not hitting, just because you don’t show frustration, you’re frustrated,” Baker said. “Usually he doesn’t miss that fastball. That was a fastball right there that he usually hits.”

Slow starts are nothing new for Tucker, who last year was hitting .188 with a .651 OPS through his first 34 games of the season. He turned it on, though, hitting .327 with 33 doubles, 24 homers, 72 RBIs and a .997 OPS in his final 106 games (after May 9). He led the AL in batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage and OPS after May 1.

The Astros can only hope a similar surge is around the corner.

“Tuck is a slow starter,” Baker said prior to the game. “That’s why I was trying to [play] him as much as I could in Spring Training, but I’m not worried about Tuck. Like I said, Tuck is probably worried about himself. Everybody likes to get hits, I don't care who you are. Nobody likes 0-fers.”

There is reason for optimism in some of Tucker’s metrics. Per Statcast, his expected slugging percentage of .651 is in the 94th percentile among qualified hitters and is much higher than the .580 he posted last year. Though his expected batting average of .281 is in the 72nd percentile, his hard-hit percentage of 40.6 is down from the 47.5 percent he posted last year.

“He’s hit some balls hard, some balls I thought were going out or some balls that hit people or were at people,” Baker said. “Just try to relieve as much pressure off of him as I can and let him be himself and the hits will start falling. You know something, when you're going bad, you need a blooper or bad-hop grounder.”