Offseason Deep Dives: Gavin Lux

To this point, I've focused entirely on pitchers for this series, most recently breaking down Ronel Blanco's surprising 2024 campaign. Now, let's switch over to the position-player side for a guy who was traded this week.

When the Dodgers signed Korean infielder Hyeseong Kim last week, there was immediate speculation that they could trade Gavin Lux. Sure enough, it was announced Monday that Lux had been shipped to the Reds in exchange for outfield prospect Mike Sirota and a Competitive Balance Round A pick.

Heading into the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Lux was viewed as a top-five prospect in all of baseball following a 2019 campaign split between Double-A Tulsa and Triple-A Oklahoma City which saw him slash an absurd .347/.421/.607 with 26 home runs and 10 stolen bases. He got a cup of coffee with the big club that year, putting up a .705 OPS with two homers and two steals in 82 plate appearances.

Lux has failed to deliver on the prospect hype since then, and he hasn't been particularly close to fulfilling it with a .252/.326/.383 battling line in 1,490 major-league plate appearances. The 10 home runs Lux hit in 2024 were a career high, and he hasn't been a stolen-base threat, topping out at just seven in 2022. Missing the entire 2023 campaign with a torn ACL didn't help his development, either.

Lux has admitted that he was tentative in spring training and in the first half of the 2024 season because he didn't have full confidence in his surgically repaired knee. The result was a lot of weakly-hit ground balls.

Something happened with Lux in the second half of the season, however. Following a visit over the All-Star break with uncle and college baseball coach Augie Schmidt, Lux decided he was going to swing the bat harder, and hey, it worked!

Lux slashed only .213/.267/.295 with three home runs prior to the All-Star break before putting up a robust .304/.391/.508 batting line with seven long balls after the break. The improvement speaks for itself, as Lux looked like a completely different player in the second half, sacrificing some contact for a lot more thump, a trade that was well worth making.

The question, of course, is whether Lux can make the improvements stick. The results did wane during September (.241/.366/.293) and in the postseason (.177/.286/.294), which might be a red flag, although Lux was dealing with a hip issue for a chunk of the playoffs. Lux's bat speed held steady at 72 mph in September, but his batted-ball data, while better than it was in the first half, took a step back compared to the rest of the entire second half, as he had a 40 percent hard-hit rate, an 89.5 mph exit velocity and a five percent barrel rate.

Where Lux plays with the Reds is still in question. He's spent the overwhelming majority of his time in the majors at second base, and all 117 of his starts in 2024 came at the keystone. That could be where he settles in with Cincinnati, but Matt McLain is also a candidate to handle second base if the Reds don't want to move him to center field, where he played during the Arizona Fall League. It sounds like another real consideration for Lux is third base, where the 27-year-old has made one start at the major-league level. The left-handed hitting Lux figures to at least play regularly against righties, whether it's at one position or multiple spots, although he could sit often versus lefties just as he did with the Dodgers.

What's not in question is that Lux will be experiencing a ballpark upgrade. Dodger Stadium is a good spot for left-handed power, but it pales in comparison to Great American Ball Park.

The above image is from Statcast's park factors, sorted by home runs for left-handed batters covering the last three seasons. As you can see, Great American Ball Park tops the list by a wide margin, and it also ranks third in overall park factor for left-handed bats. Dodger Stadium ranks 21st.

Lux will still have to play half of his games on the road, of course, and if his second-half improvement in 2024 doesn't carry over to 2025, his home venue in 2025 might not matter that much. That said, the new friendly home confines certainly help raise Lux's potential ceiling.

Could Lux run more with new Reds manager Terry Francona in the dugout? During Francona's 11 seasons in Cleveland, the Guardians ranked third in baseball in stolen bases. The Dodgers ranked 19th over that span. Lux has never stolen more than seven bases in a season in the majors, and his sprint speed fell to the 59th percentile in 2024 in his first year back from knee surgery. However, his sprint speed was in the 88th percentile in 2022 and 94th percentile in 2021, and he ran at times in the minors, stealing 27 bases back in 2017 and reaching double digits in each of the two seasons after that. I wouldn't be counting on Lux helping out in the stolen base department in 2025, but it's possible he chips in more in that regard.

I'll be tracking Lux's ADP closely to see if it rises following his trade to the Reds. I assume it will, but considering it currently sits at 555 in NFBC drafts, it could go up significantly and he would probably still be going undrafted outside of deeper leagues. The new digs and new approach might make him a bargain at that cost.