Gavin Lux has proven me wrong

He's been remarkable at the plate

It takes a lot for someone to admit they were wrong. I will admit, I’ve been very harsh on Gavin Lux all season. Whether it was here on my Substack or on Twitter, I didn’t hold back when posting how bad of a player he had been.

Now, I’m not going to go that far and say I was wrong about him being bad, but I will say I was PROVEN wrong.

Through the first half of the season, Gavin Lux WAS the worst hitter in baseball. There’s no arguing it, the stats back it up. Through July 10, he was last in all of baseball among qualified hitters in OPS (.542) and wRC+ (54). A reminder that the league average OPS is .700 and the league average wRC+ is 100.

Now, I wasn’t like some Dodgers fans who were calling for him to be DFA’d… that was a little extreme. However, I was saying the Dodgers needed to go with another option. I understood that he was recovering from the ACL injury, but a 260+ plate appearance sample size was large enough.

It’s not like he was posting a .650 OPS and 80 wRC+. Lux was legit the worst hitter in all of baseball through three months. He was hurting the Dodgers at the plate.

Ever since July 11, though… he’s been a completely different hitter.

Over Lux’s last 27 games, he hasn’t just heated up. He’s legitimately turned into one of the best hitters in all of baseball. Over the past month, Lux is hitting .345/.411/.607. He owns a 1.018 OPS and 183 wRC+.

For context, that OPS and wRC+ are Shohei Ohtani caliber numbers. Lux has essentially been Ohtani at the plate for a month now. During these 27 games, Lux has five home runs and 20 RBI. If you want a 162-game pace of those numbers, that comes out to 30 home runs and 120 RBI.

Those are MVP caliber numbers! And this is GAVIN LUX we’re talking about!

This current 27-game stretch is the first time in his career he’s posted an OPS greater than 1.000. He came close in 2022 when he got hot during the summer, but this current run is the best of his career.

The biggest difference during this stretch is the fact that he’s swinging harder than ever before.

From The Athletic:

During an All-Star break trip back to Wisconsin, he took batting practice with his uncle, Augie Schmidt, a former prep star and longtime Carthage College coach. Together, they looked back at his best swings. They were violent, looking to generate slug more than just putting the ball in play…. Before the All-Star break, his average competitive swing registered at 70.6 mph according to Baseball Savant. Since the break, it’s been at 72.1 mph.

It’s clearly working.

During this 27-game stretch, Lux’s hard-hit rate is 48 percent with an average exit velocity of 89.3-mph. Prior to that, his hard-hit rate was only 37 percent with an average exit velocity of 87.1-mph. That is quite the jump. Clearly, it’s making all the difference in the world.

With Lux swinging the bat more aggressively, his strikeout numbers have jumped from 21 to 25 percent. You will easily live with that. Lux has been adding significant power while not sacrificing much at the plate in regards to strikeouts.

While it’s easy to get excited with the numbers, we do have to remember this is still a small sample size. It’s fewer than 100 plate appearances. We gotta see him do this over a longer stretch.

Like I mentioned earlier though, we’ve never seen Lux be THIS GOOD for this long before. We’ve seen him look solid at the plate, but not like this. We’ve never seen this kind of power. We haven’t seen this kind of consistency.

His uncle giving him those tips could honestly be career-changing. It also boosted the Dodgers’ chances of winning a World Series this season.

I mean just think about it. Lux was the worst hitter in baseball. Now, he’s essentially Ohtani at the plate. I know he’s not going to produce like this the rest of the way, though that would be incredible. But if Lux could just post a wRC+ of 100-110 the rest of the season, that would be MASSIVE for the Dodgers. It deepens their lineup even more and gives them so much more depth.

I’m proud of Lux. I’m glad he’s turning things around and finally showing the flashes that made him the top prospect in baseball all those years ago. He has proved me wrong.

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