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Gavin Lux Has Let It Rip

Gavin Lux Has Let It Rip

Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

The Dodgers developed a powerful seven-game NL West lead over the very first half of the season. While they needed to endure a late charge by the Padres — whom they’ll deal with in a Division Series that begins on Saturday, a rematch of the 2022 pairing that wound up sending out a 111-win Dodgers team home — they had the ability to do so regardless of their beginning pitching tearing at the joints. Even before Mookie Betts and Max Muncy returned from prolonged lacks due to injuries, the development of Gavin Lux as an offending force played an essential function in the group’s second-half offending uptick.

Lux’s general numbers for 2024 — .251/.320/.383 with 10 crowning achievement — don’t scan as especially unique. Dragged down by a September depression that he started to emerge from throughout the season’s last week, he completed with a modest 100 wRC+. Based on his general batted ball information, consisting of a .262 xBA and a .393 xSLG, it’s tough to make the case that he must have done far better. The bottom line is that he needed to strike well adequate to get his head back above water after a sluggish start that looked as though it may cost him his area in the lineup.

The Dodgers have actually revealed fantastic persistence with the 26-year-old Lux, both in the past and this season. A 2016 first-round select of a Kenosha, Wisconsin high school, he positioned 2nd on our Top 100 Prospects list as a 70-FV possibility 4 years later on (behind just Wander Franco). While he had actually currently debuted in the majors the previous September, he didn’t get a grip till 2021, and required a strong September to avoid that season from being a frustration, though disruptions due to wrist and hamstring injuries most likely played a part in his issues.

Lux lastly invested a complete season in the majors in 2022, striking a reputable .276/.346/.399 (113 wRC+) while splitting time in between 2nd base and left field. The Dodgers prepared to move him back to shortstop for the 2023 season after Trea Turner left in complimentary firm, however on February 27, 2023, he lost his balance while going to 2nd base, and took a spill. He turned up clutching his ideal knee; he had actually torn his anterior cruciate ligament along with his lateral security ligament. His season was over before it had actually started; he went through surgical treatment on March 7.

The loss of Lux led the Dodgers to play light-hitting Miguel Rojas at shortstop regularly, with a handful of other gamers — Chris Taylor, Enrique Hernández, and Amed Rosario — pitching in. The most intriguing of them was Betts; the six-time Gold Glove ideal fielder, who initially turned up as a 2nd baseman with the Red Sox, returned to the middle infield in midseason when the Dodgers benched novice Miguel Vargas. Betts not just made 62 starts at 2nd base, he began 12 at shortstop, a position he’d just quickly messed around at in the low minors, and he appeared like a natural.

The Dodgers prepared to keep Betts at 2nd base for 2024, however Lux’s protective battles in the spring — particularly with his tossing, an issue that had actually periodically raised its head previously in his profession — led them to reconsider their strategy. With the group’s Opening Day in Seoul, South Korea simply 12 days away, supervisor Dave Roberts chose to take some pressure off Lux by moving him back to 2nd, with Betts going to shortstop, a choice both gamers accepted.

“Just to make this move right now, it’s something that the entire organization feels is the right thing to do to give us the best chance to prevent runs and to win baseball games,” Roberts stated. “Specific to Gavin, it gives him an opportunity to get to the other side of the diamond… So to get him back over there, shorten the throw, it should be less of a toll on his body overall and give him an opportunity to have success.”

Lux’s fielding showed less of an issue than his striking, as he gathered simply 8 hits in his very first 16 video games. Even while mostly being protected from lefties (simply 13 of 83 plate looks), he completed the month batting .182/.241/.208 (31 wRC+) with a set of doubles being his only extra-base hits. As he had a hard time, Roberts preserved that the group would support him, offering him a possibility to change after such a long layoff. “I don’t think that would be fair to anyone, to be quite honest,” stated Roberts of evaluating Lux too roughly too early, pointing out 150 plate looks as a reasonable sample.

Lux enhanced rather in May (90 wRC+) however fell back once again in June (67 wRC+). He had actually blown well past the 150-PA mark, however his general numbers still looked unattractive. After dropping through the very first half of July, he reached the All-Star break with a .213/.267/.295 slash line and simply 3 homers in 277 PA. Among gamers with a minimum of 250 PA in either league, just 5 out of 207 had a lower wRC+ than his 60. By his Statcast anticipated numbers, he wasn’t rather getting his cash’s worth, however even those (.251 xBA, .353 xSLG, .289 xwOBA) were absolutely nothing to compose home about. Only strong defense and forecasts for favorable regression kept him off my Replacement Level Killers list, however it appeared rather possible the Dodgers — who by this point lacked both Muncy, who had actually strained an oblique in mid-May, and Betts, who had actually suffered a fractured left hand after being struck by a pitch in mid-June — would look for an upgrade ahead of the July 30 due date, especially with both Taylor and Hernández having a hard time also.

During the All-Star break, Lux went home to Wisconsin, where according to The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya he dealt with his uncle, Augie Schmidt, a previous Golden Spikes Award winner and minors infielder who has actually acted as the long time coach at Kenosha’s Carthage College. Reviewing video footage of Lux’s much better days, the coach and player concluded that he required to create more power, and to put more rely on his surgically fixed ideal knee. “Together, they looked back at his best swings. They were violent, looking to generate slug more than just putting the ball in play,” Ardaya composed. “To generate the force he wanted, he was going to have to rely on flexing out, or ‘locking out’ his right leg.”

“He’s like, ‘Screw it. If I’m going down, I’m going down aggressive,’” striking coach Robert Van Scoyoc informed Ardaya. “I think there’s some freedom in that.”

The modification in frame of mind rapidly settled. Lux gathered numerous hits in 5 of his very first 7 starts in the 2nd half, and struck home runs in back-to-back video games for the very first time all season on July 20 and 21 in Boston; he made NL Player of the Week honors for that stretch. The Dodgers reacquired Rosario and included a rehabbing Tommy Edman at the trade due date, however Lux continued to rake. Rosario made simply 2 starts at 2nd base before being designated for task; as it ended up, those 2 video games were the only ones in which the Dodgers dealt with lefty beginners in a 22-game period. Betts returned on August 12, as a best fielder, with Rojas retaking the shortstop task after his own IL stint, and Muncy returned on August 19.

Lux struck .333/.403/.610 with 7 homers from the All-Star break through completion of August, a month throughout which the Dodgers went 19-8 however just increased their department lead from 4.5 video games to 6. His 180 wRC+ over that stretch ranked seventh in the majors behind some genuine thumpers: Aaron Judge, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bobby Witt Jr., Yordan Alvarez, Juan Soto, and Lawrence Butler. Inevitably, he cooled down, with a 4-for-44 slide (all songs) from September 6 to 24, however he appeared to right the ship in the last days of the season, going 7-for-16 with 2 doubles in 4 video games versus the Padres and Rockies. Overall, he had the 13th-highest wRC+ of any gamer in either league after the All-Star break:

Highest wRC+ in the Second Half

Player Team PA HR AVG OBP SLG wRC+
Aaron Judge NYY 280 24 .347 .496 .736 236
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. TOR 278 16 .376 .450 .678 212
Bobby Witt Jr. KCR 284 16 .345 .419 .635 189
Yordan Alvarez HOU 242 16 .327 .409 .626 188
Juan Soto NYY 286 18 .278 .409 .585 180
Shohei Ohtani LAD 302 25 .301 .375 .662 180
Francisco Lindor NYM 258 16 .306 .368 .574 164
Jackson Merrill SDP 243 12 .314 .349 .596 159
Brent Rooker OAK 270 18 .295 .359 .549 158
Lawrence Butler OAK 258 13 .300 .345 .553 155
Eugenio Suárez ARI 273 20 .307 .341 .602 153
José Ramírez CLE 281 16 .291 .350 .566 153
Gavin Lux LAD 210 7 .304 .390 .508 152
Jorge Soler 2 Tms 232 11 .267 .387 .513 150
Seiya Suzuki CHC 271 8 .300 .402 .487 150
Teoscar Hernández LAD 250 14 .289 .360 .542 150

Among the Dodgers, just Ohtani and Muncy have actually been hotter, which has actually assisted to balance out more warm second-half provings by a few of the offense’s other stalwarts:

Dodgers Regulars in the Second Half

Player PA HR AVG OBP SLG wRC+
Shohei Ohtani 302 25 .301 .375 .662 180
Max Muncy 126 6 .245 .405 .520 158
Gavin Lux 210 7 .304 .390 .508 152
Teoscar Hernández 250 14 .289 .360 .542 150
Freddie Freeman 213 8 .266 .343 .447 120
Mookie Betts 185 9 .263 .314 .497 119
Enrique Hernández 180 7 .274 .307 .458 112
Miguel Rojas 139 3 .282 .348 .387 110
Andy Pages 130 5 .226 .302 .426 104
Tommy Edman 153 6 .237 .294 .417 98
Will Smith 200 5 .206 .295 .331 78

Minimum 100 plate looks.

Those gamers have actually offered pitchers couple of locations to conceal; throughout the 2nd half the Dodgers cranked out 5.58 runs per video game, up from a currently robust 4.94 per video game in the very first half, balancing out a boost in runs permitted per video game from 4.03 to 4.53.

Statcast’s new-fangled bat-tracking information highlight Lux’s increasing propensity to let ‘er rip:

Gavin Lux Bat Tracking Splits

Split Avg Bat Speed Fast Swing% Squared Up% Blasts% Swing Length
1st Half 70.6 miles per hour 10.7% 27.0% 9.4% 7.2 feet
second Half 72.0 miles per hour 21.2% 24.1% 12.6% 7.3 feet
July 14-August 31 72.0 miles per hour 22.4% 25.0% 14.9% 7.4 feet

SOURCE: Baseball Savant

Lux included 1.6 miles per hour to his typical bat speed after the All-Star break, and basically doubled his rate of quick swings (75 miles per hour or faster). He didn’t square up balls with rather the exact same frequency, which is to state that he didn’t reach a minimum of 80% of the optimal exit speed possible based upon the pitch and swing speeds, however he did enhance his blast rate, which sets a quick swing with a squared-up outcome. You can see that the contrast was a bit more significant when comparing his very first half to the abovementioned post-break, pre-September stretch, however not by that much. As for the quality of contact, anticipated and real outcomes, the divides by half are night and day:

Gavin Lux Statcast Splits

Split BBE EV LA AVG xBA SLG xSLG wOBA xwOBA Brl% HH%
1st Half 201 87.2 8 .213 .251 .295 .353 .251 .289 3.5% 36.8%
second Half 130 90.1 11 .304 .278 .508 .451 .387 .361 10.0% 47.7%

SOURCE: Baseball Savant

Lux’s typical exit speed enhanced by almost 3 miles an hour, his barrel rate almost tripled, and his xSLG increased by almost 100 points. He did whiff and start out more frequently (for the latter, the split was 20.6% versus 25.2%), however that was a little rate to spend for such robust production. As the table reveals, his typical launch angle increased a bit, however the more standard batted ball statistics really define the enhancement more plainly:

Gavin Lux Batted Ball Splits

Split GB/FB GB FB+PU Pull Pull FB%
1st Half 2.37 54.2% 22.9% 22.9% 2.5%
second Half 1.44 40.0% 27.7% 53.8% 6.9%

SOURCE: Baseball Savant

Lux struck the ball in the air even more regularly, and he even prevented appearing as typically while doing that. What’s most intriguing is his considerably enhanced pull rate, which for some factor doesn’t appear to almost the exact same degree in his Sports Info Solutions divides (37.3% very first half, 39.2% 2nd half). Particularly due to the fact that we can get a spray chart visual from Statcast to support the above numbers, I’m sticking to those for my analysis. Statcast separates popups (captured by infielders) from fly balls (captured by outfielders) rather of integrating them as SIS does (with infield fly ball rate then broken out as a subset of fly balls), so in the table above I’ve aggregated those 2. Here are the abovementioned spray charts:

Look at all those doubles down the ideal field line in the 2nd half, not to point out the loud fly balls. When Lux reached the caution track in the very first half, it was up the middle or to the opposite field, and it nearly never ever headed out, whereas when he struck it far in the 2nd half, he did more damage.

Pitch-type sensible, Lux has actually resisted breaking balls all season (.168 AVG, .244 SLG), however he’s gone from weak efficiencies versus four-seamers and sinkers (.222 AVG/.297 SLG for the previous, .267/.378 for the latter) to obliterating them (.429 AVG/.714 SLG for the previous, .444/1.056 for the latter), and he’s enhanced likewise versus cutters and splitters.

For all of his in-season enhancement, Lux was generally an automated out versus lefties (.152/.220/.174, 17 wRC+ in 50 PA), which didn’t truly alter throughout his grip-it-and-rip-it stage (2-for-22 with 11 Ks), however the bright side for him is that unless the Padres start Martín Pérez — who’s a huge action down from Dylan Cease, Michael King, Yu Darvish, and the hurt Joe Musgrove — the Dodgers won’t deal with any southpaw beginners in the Division Series. In Adrian Morejon, Yuki Matsui, Wandy Peralta, and Tanner Scott, San Diego has no scarcity of lefty bullpen choices if supervisor Mike Shildt requires a beneficial match, however Roberts has his own levers to pull if that’s the case, with Enrique Hernández the most likely choice. I wouldn’t anticipate Lux to bring the Dodgers through the Division Series by any ways, however his in-season enhancement has actually extended their lineup, and he might well show to be among those low-in-the-lineup difference-makers that separate the winners from the losers in October.

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