ANAHEIM, Calif. – Cubs right fielder Kyle Tucker was noncommittal Friday night when asked if his first homer in 26 games could snap him back into form.
“I mean, maybe,” he said then. “We’ll see how [Saturday] goes, and then next day, and the next day.”
Saturday went quite well.
In the Cubs’ 12-1 win against the Angels, he recorded his first multi-homer game as a Cub and the eighth of his career.
“Squared up some balls pretty well today, and one yesterday,” said Tucker, who also hit a double in his 3-for-5 performance Saturday. “So I’m just trying to continue to move it on to tomorrow.”
Even if Tucker wasn’t going to declare his slump over, his Saturday had all the signs of a turning point. It was his first game with three or more hits since late June. And while groundouts were plentiful during Tucker’s almost two-month rut, he put the ball on the ground in play just once on Saturday — and that was facing a position player on the mound in the eighth.
“This was coming,” manager Craig Counsell said. “This is the nature of the game. We don’t want slumps, we hate slumps, they’re mentally exhausting to go through, but they happen. And Kyle will be better moving forward because of this. But it’s part of the game that happens, and you’ve got to get through it. And you know that he’s a great player, and he works hard to figure it out and get back on track, and we need him to do it. And he’s done so.”
Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly said Sunday that Tucker has concentrated on engaging his lower half properly.
“The legs was kind of the one thing that resonates with him,” Kelly said. “It would always come up in a lot of our work, of, ‘I’ve got to get in my legs, I’ve got to get my legs.’ So, just focusing on that and hoping that that cleaned up the bat path – and it looks like it has.”
The Cubs scored nine of their first 10 runs Saturday on home runs. Tucker’s pair drove in five runs. Reese McGuire hit the first grand slam of his career.
“It means the world to be able to do that up here at the highest level, and amazing players getting on base in front of me there,” McGuire said. “I was joking with Dansby [Swanson] telling him, ‘Thanks for leaning into that pitch and getting yourself on base for me.'”
The pitch that hit Swanson was nowhere near the plate. Before him, Nico Hoerner and Ian Happ both drew walks to load the bases for McGuire.
With Michael Busch’s RBI single included, every one of the Cubs’ first ten RBI came with two outs, a season high.
As the Cubs continued to tack on, McGuire added a sacrifice fly for his fifth RBI of the day, tying a career high that he’d also achieved at Angels stadium last April with the Red Sox.
The Cubs kept McGuire on the roster when catcher Miguel Amaya returned from his stay on injured list for a strained left oblique, opting to carry three catchers for the sake of depth. Good thing, too, because in his first game back, Amaya sprained his ankle.
Amaya is continuing his rehab at the Cubs’ Arizona complex. He ran on the anti-gravity treadmill Friday, Counsell said, but is still “weeks away” from a return.
Cubs rookie right-hander Cade Horton continued a dominant run with six scoreless innings, limiting the Angels to three hits, all singles. The first 21 pitches he threw were strikes. And of the 74 pitches he threw Sunday, with the Cubs limiting his workload down the stretch, only 19 were called balls.
“It’s been a big deal,” Counsell said of Horton’s efficiency while pitching with a limit. “Because you worry about that, certainly , as we’ve gone through this. But his efficiency, and how many outs he’s getting in these outings — I didn’t expect this when we decided to do this, really, but he’s been incredible with it. And it’s helped us out a ton and helped our bullpen out a ton.”
In his last seven outings combined, dating back to a bumpy start in Houston, Horton has only surrendered two runs.
“I learned a lot from that outing,” Horton said. “I felt like I didn’t have a lot of conviction inmy outing then, so got through the [All-Star] break and just really just started to trust my stuff and attack, not be afraid of the results.”
Horton exited his previous start in the third inning, with a blister on the middle finger of his throwing hand affecting especially his slider and changeup. But he went through the rest of the week pretty much as normal.
By the eighth inning Sunday, the Cubs were leading by 11 runs, and the Angels put infielder Oswald Peraza on the mound, the equivalent of waving a white flag.