2024 review: Gavin Lux

The return from a torn ACL was a bumpy ride, but Lux smoothed things out by the second half

After missing the entire 2023 season due to a torn ACL, Gavin Lux’s return to Major League Baseball was quite the journey.

Ahead of spring training, Lux was assigned as the primary shortstop for the Dodgers, with Miguel Rojas serving as his understudy. It was a rough adjustment for the infielder, as Lux’s throws from the left side of the infield would routinely bounce in front of Freddie Freeman, leading manager Dave Roberts to have Mookie Betts assume duties at shortstop and have Lux move to second base, with only a little more than a week remaining in spring training.

On the offensive front, Lux performed well in 13 spring training games, slashing .297/.350/.378 with a home run and six RBIs. When the regular season rolled around, Lux stumbled out of the gate to the tune of a .182/.241/.208 slash line with just two extra-base hits (both being doubles) and five RBIs at the end of April. His early offensive output limited Lux to fairly sparse playing time early in the season, as the most games he played in consecutively to begin the year was a four game stretch from March 30 through April 2.

As the weather grew warmer in the month of May, so did Lux’s production at the plate. Lux swatted his first home run of the season off of Miami Marlins’ reliever George Soriano on May 7. It was his first regular season home run hit in 631 days, dating back to August 15, 2022.

He added three doubles and two triples to his fairly solid month of May, raising his season OPS from a dismal .462 to a more respectable .560 clip (still nowhere near league average).

Similar results persisted in the month of June, with Lux adding just one more home run to his season total, with his batting average and OPS rising from .209 to .221 and from .560 to .571.

It was a brutal first half for the former first round pick, but almost magically, the potential the Dodgers had always seen within him began to sprout, and in the second half, he turned into one of the more premiere bats in the entire league.

Lux told Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic in August that over the All-Star break he looked at videos of his old, good swings, and found that purposely swinging harder was his path forward.

After going hitless in the first game of the second half against the Boston Red Sox, Lux crushed a solo home run against Red Sox starter Brayan Bello, following up with a double to give him two extra-base hits on the game. It was the first time that he had multiple extra-base hits in a game in over three years, dating back to June 11, 2021 against the Texas Rangers.

He followed up that performance the following day with a three-hit performance, where he added another two extra-base hits to his season total, being a home run and a double.

In late July, first baseman Freddie Freeman stayed in Los Angeles to tend to his three-year-old son, Maximus, who at the time had recently been diagnosed with transient synovitis— it was later determined that he was suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome.

With Freeman away from the team as they set up a three-game series in Houston, along with Mookie Betts still on the injured list due to a fractured hand, Lux was elevated all the way up to third in the Dodgers lineup, behind the likes of Shohei Ohtani and Teoscar Hernández. In the three games against the Houston Astros, Lux collected four hits in eight at bats, adding his fourth home run of the month in the final game of the series.

By month’s end, Lux increased his home run total from just two to six, raised his batting average up to .239 and raised his OPS by 90 points to a .656 clip.

After looking like a fringe big league hitter who ranked as one of the worst hitters in the first half of the season, Lux played like an All-Star who ranked as one of the best hitters in the second half. Lux slashed .304/.391/.508 with seven home runs, 26 RBIs, 16 doubles, and 31 runs scored over his final 61 games of the season.

Among all qualified hitters in the second half, Lux’s .304 average ranked 12th in all of baseball, even higher than soon-to-be NL MVP Shohei Ohtani, who hit .302 in the second half. His 152 wRC+ after the All-Star break ranked 13th among all qualified hitters. After posting a negative fWAR in the first half, Lux posted a solid 2.0 fWAR in the second half, which netted him a respectable 1.5 fWAR overall on the season.

In the postseason, Lux wasn’t a significant cog in the Dodgers’ lineup over the first three games, but connected for a two-run home run off of San Diego Padres’ southpaw Wandy Peralta in Game 4 of the NLDS. It was his first postseason home run since Game 1 of the 2019 NLDS against the eventual World Series winning Washington Nationals.

Lux suffered a hip flexor injury in Game 1 of the NLCS against the New York Mets, and was ruled out for Games 2, 4, and 6 of the series as the Dodgers faced left-handed starting pitchers.

After being an offensive liability throughout the first four games of the World Series against the New York Yankees, Lux connected for a sacrifice fly off of Yankees’ closer Luke Weaver that tied up the score at 6-6 in the top of the eighth inning. A Mookie Betts sacrifice fly gave the Dodgers the lead that helped them ultimately win the World Series.

2024 particulars

Age: 26

Stats: .251/.320/.383, 100 wRC+, 10 HR, 50 RBI, 24 2B, 59 R, 2.1 rWAR, 1.5 fWAR

Salary: $1,225,000

Game of the year

Lux’s best game of the 2024 season came on July 21 against the Boston Red Sox, where he collected three hits, including a home run and a double. It was the first time in the season that his OPS was over .600, and it was the first time in his career that he collected two consecutive games with multiple extra-base hits.

Roster status

Lux has 4 years, 114 days of service time and is eligible for salary arbitration for the second time. He’s projected by MLB Trade Rumors to earn $2.7 million in 2025, while Cot’s Baseball Contracts projects Lux to earn $3.225 million.