Steve Webb
A Letter to Gavin Lux’s dear mother:
Dear Mrs. Lux,
I think your son Gavin is going to be in Los Angeles for a while. Can you please make arrangements to sell his futon in Oklahoma City? He won’t be needing that anymore.
Sincerely, Dodgers Fans
Highly Touted Prospect
All kidding aside, the moment that Dodger fans have been waiting for for a couple of years now is finally here. Highly touted phenom Gavin Lux has officially transitioned from “prospect” to “big league star”.
For a while this year, some might have wondered if it was going to happen at all, though no one could really blame the skeptics. After all, the Kid from Kenosha had had a pretty rough go of it in his big league call-ups of 2019 and 2020. After the first round draft pick set the minors on fire in 2019, Lux was a September call-up and did okay. He went 2-for-5 in his first game, but beyond that there was not much to write home about.
He finished the year with a .240 batting average and a .705 OPS. Not bad, but a far cry from the gaudy .347/.421/607 slash line that he had put up in Tulsa and OKC that year. In the minor leagues Lux had been something of a phenomena, moving quickly to Triple A and then absolutely raking when he got there. It was little surprise to anyone around baseball that Lux was now the number one rated prospect, not just in the Dodger organization, but in the entire major leagues.
Lux’s 2020 doesn’t pan out
In 2020, it was thought that Lux might be ready to transition to the big club and be the starting second baseman, but it was not to be. He never got on track in the season of Covid, and really was not a factor at all in the Dodgers championship run. He played in 19 games for the Dodgers last year, but was underwhelming. An average under .200. Not much power in his hits, only jacking three home runs and tallying an OPS of a paltry .596 for the season. There were whispers that maybe Lux just wasn’t ready for the big time, and might not ever be.
Shaky Start to 2021
But when Lux had a strong spring in 2021, fans’ hopes were rekindle that Lux might indeed be the answer to the Dodgers’ infield hole that was left when Kike Hernandez opted for free agency and headed for Boston. But once again, the harsh realities of regular season play came in and Lux looked a bit lost in the first month of the season. By the end of April, the can’t miss kid was looking a whole lot like a bust for this year. His average had dipped to .179, and he had only two extra base hits and no home runs. Of course, his progress wasn’t helped much by a stint on the IL in the middle of the month that cost him ten days of playing time.
Home Sweet Home
But on his visit to his home state of Wisconsin at the end of the month, something seemed to happen. He went 2-for-4 in the last game of the series, and while the road trip was awful for many reasons, Lux found something at the plate that had eluded him the first month of the season.
Gavin on Fire
By the time the team returned to Dodger Stadium, Lux’s average was finally up over .200. And in the first night of the home stand, he had an LFG moment that could very well end up being the turning point of the season so far. With the Dodgers trailing by one with two men on in the bottom of the eighth, Lux demolished a pitch, sending it deep into the Southern California night. It was a huge home run, and announced with an exclamation point that Gavin Lux had arrived.
He has kept hitting through the rest of the home stand, and on Tuesday night, he bookended his first home run with another big fly, this one a grand slam to blow open a rout of the Diamondbacks.
In the last 15 games, Lux has a .327/.383/.491 slash line, and has looked every bit like the hype around him was very real. In addition, Lux has moved to shortstop in the wake of the Corey Seager injury and has already turned in a number of nifty plays at that position.
Is this production sustainable? Has the young Lux finally found “it”? Nobody knows, but from what we’ve seen this week, it sure as heck looks like it.
