Kyle Tucker's reaction to slump foolishly ignores sad Cubs reality

A once-commanding NL Central lead for the Chicago Cubs has now turned into a massive deficit behind the streaking rival Milwaukee Brewers. Naturally, the dramatic fall-off in recent weeks of Pete Crow-Armstrong has underscored the Cubs' struggles, but so too has the brutal slump from star outfielder Kyle Tucker. However, coming off a bounce-back win on Saturday, Tucker downplayed his slump in the interest of team success.

Following Chicago's 3-1 victory over the lowly Pirates, Tucker asserted that he's not interested in his individual stats as his streak of games without a home run reached 22 games, as long as the Cubs are winning games.

"I don't care [how long it's been since hitting a home run] as long as we're winning games," Tucker said.

Undeniably, that sounds like a great teammate to have in a clubhouse, putting the team's success over his own. At the same time, those two things are more correlated than Tucker seemingly realizes as the Cubs are just 10-13 since Tucker hit his last home run and while he's been slumping mightily over that span.

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Kyle Tucker completely missed the point with reaction to slump

Tucker has played in 22 games while the Cubs have played 23 since his July 19 home run against the Boston Red Sox. Again, Chicago is three games under .500 over that span, which is strong correlated to the struggles of Tucker at the plate.

Over that 22-game span for Tucker and the Cubs' 10-13 run, the star outfielder not only doesn't have a long-ball to his credit, but he's slashing an abysmal .187/.344/.213 with only two doubles and 14 overall hits in 94 plate appearances. It's one of the worst streaks in his recent career and, frankly, it's not hard to connect the dots that Chicago is paying the price with his slump.

So, while it's great for Tucker to put the team's success first coming off of a win, it's also a deflection of accountability. Yes, the Cubs winning baseball games should be the top priority for Tucker and everyone in the clubhouse. At the same time, when the team simply hasn't been succeeding and, frankly, has been wildly disappointing of late and Tucker has been contributing to the lack of success substantially, that makes his words ring a bit more hollow.

To put a finer point on it, though, things aren't going to turn around for the Cubs until they do the same for Tucker — and perhaps for Crow-Armstrong too.

Cubs need Tucker and PCA revivals to renew hope in Chicago

Just as Tucker has been struggling, so too has PCA. He's looked completely lost at the plate since the calendar turned to August, going just 3-for-37 with 14 strikeouts, good for only a .213 OPS. To be clear, that's the OPS, not just his on-base percentage (.105) or slugging percentage (.108). It's been awful.

For the Cubs to have two outfielders who were riding MVP-caliber seasons coming into the All-Star break to drop off so dramatically, it's no surprise that Chicago has been limping through the dog days of summer and losing ground in the division race to the Brewers. That's simply not a remotely sustainable formula for winning games, especially when the two players in question are so inherently crucial to the team's success.

Especially with the run Milwaukee is currently on and just 40 games remaining in the regular season, catching the Brewers might be a ship that's sailed for the Cubs. But Tucker needs to realize that, while team success is the ultimate goal, he's a linchpin in making that happen. And if he and his outfield cohort don't start to turn things around, then the struggles are going to continue for Chicago into the postseason.