LOS ANGELES — In order to let go, Gavin Lux decided to let it rip.
From his inner depths, the second baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers has discovered something. Even though his surgically repaired right knee was in good condition, he could never fully trust it, which caused him to worry for months. He could not consistently press his front leg into the ground to provide force. This was the heart of his swing. However, he has been acting recklessly with it for the last few weeks. He has not taken any kind of hack in years—not even since the finest season of his major-league career.
Following Lux’s greatest run of performances in recent memory, the key question is: Is he swinging harder because he is performing better, or is he playing better because he is swinging harder?
“I think a little bit of both,” Lux said.
Yes, Lux intentionally increased his swing speed after a year of being irritated by ground balls that were hit lightly to his pull side. Lux’s tendency to protect his knee a year after rupturing his ACL and LCL during spring training only pushed him to become more carefree, which powered his successful 2022 season (.745 OPS), until Lux became frustrated with his lack of power.
Advanced metrics show that Gavin Lux has been swinging harder since the All-Star break, which means his exit velocity is up, too. (Orlando Ramirez / Getty Images)
He made the decision to give it a go. He practiced hitting with his uncle, Augie Schmidt, a former prep standout and veteran Carthage College coach, during an All-Star break trip back to Wisconsin. They went back over his best strokes together. They were not content to just put the ball in play; they were aggressive and wanted to create slug.
Since then, Lux has continued to swing like it. Lux is swinging the bat faster, but the public data on bat speed is still very new. Baseball Savant reports that his average competitive swing speed prior to the All-Star break was 70.6 mph. It is been traveling at 72.1 mph since the break. He is hitting it harder, too, as evidenced by the fact that his average exit velocity has increased from 87.9 mph to 90.2 mph.
He has indeed been hitting. Prior to the intermission, Lux’s OPS was.562. He had increased it by over 100 runs (.666) going into Wednesday, with a 1.197 OPS in his previous 58 plate appearances.
It’s intentional.
“He’s like, ‘Screw it. If I’m going down, I’m going down aggressive,’” hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said. “I think there’s some freedom in that.”
Freedom, all right, in his thinking. Subtly, freedom in his knee. Lux suffered a freak knee injury last spring while running the bases, and he spent a large portion of the first few months of the season healing from both the physical and mental scars, learning to trust it again with thick cuts. He was going to have to use his right leg to flex out, or “lock out,” in order to provide the force he desired. However, Lux claimed that as time went on, he became increasingly aware of how his strategy had evolved—even before his injuries. Lux felt inert even in 2022, when he started to contribute in the bottom of the order, trying to “hit a single the other way.”
Even if Lux’s 2019 power surge in the minors (26 home runs in 113 games) seems like a historical outlier, Lux remembered that it all began with his mentality at the time.
“In the minor leagues, it was always like, the first two pitches are mine to do damage,” Lux said. “The pitcher makes a good pitch on the corner or down and away and I don’t feel like I can do damage on it, then I’m going to take it. Then once you get to two strikes, then it’s try to fight and put the ball in play. But those first two are mine. From there you just grind it out.
“(Earlier this season), I was almost taking like a two-strike mentality from the first pitch.”
As much as Dave Roberts encouraged Lux to be patient and go well beyond the roughly 150 plate appearances he had set out as an acceptable timeline for his return to productivity, he also pointed out “passivity” in Lux’s swing and swing choices.
Not as much now. Even though there were constant assurances – “It takes a village,” Roberts previously stated – Lux did not really take a swing at it until right before the All-Star break.
“I think eventually he just got tired of failing a certain way and decided to come up with a new way that he thought might lead to some better outcomes,” Van Scoyoc said.
It arrives at a crucial moment. For the last two winters, Lux was supposed to be the Dodgers’ starting shortstop, but things just did not work out that way. This season, they kept him in the lineup in the hopes that his output at the bottom of the order would extend a lineup that was heavy on the top players. That had not materialized during those initial 200, 250, or even 150 plate appearances. However, Lux has solidified his place on the roster and may have even cracked through more scar tissue in the process, especially with a large portion of the roster shifting around him in the upcoming weeks.
Lux has seen his bat speed data, after all, and it is what they show that suggests the more significant change that he believes may result in something enduring.
“I think that just shows you, if the intent’s there, the bat speed’s gonna be up,” Lux said. “It’s a little bit of everything. I think the intent is where a lot of it is coming from.”
(Top photo of Gavin Lux: Harry How / Getty Images)
