Almost no part of Gavin Lux's 2024 season has gone according to plan.
Originally projected as the team's starting shortstop, he was moved off the six almost immediately in the spring in favor of Mookie Betts following some defensive woes. Sliding over to the keystone has been good for him, as every defensive metric paints him as an above average player. But not quite good enough to compensate for what has been disappointing offensive production.
The bat hasn't manifested at any point, as Lux has been fairly poor at the plate all season. His wRC+ of 62 not only indicates a well-below-average hitter, but one who is only ahead of two qualifying hitters in that regard. That's the byproduct of an offensive line that includes a mere .262 on-base percentage and .083 isolated slugging.
One does imagine that the Dodgers have attempted to exercise as much patience as possible with Lux. He flashed in 2022 before a spring training injury wiped out his entire 2023 campaign. But with such minimal production for a team that has been prone to stretches of low output over the last six weeks, that patience will likely start to wear thin at some point.
Perhaps Saturday's performance was a sign of a corner turning for the 26-year-old.
Lux was 2-for-4 in Saturday's win, contributing a home run and a pair of RBIs to the effort. It was his 11th multi-hit game of the season and first since he did it on back-to-back games on June 9th & 11th. In the larger context of June, there are some positive things happening for Lux.
Thus far in the month, Lux has posted his highest quality of contact and his lowest groundball rate. His HardHit% has actually jumped against fastballs and breaking pitches. He's also cut down on swinging strikes, posting a gradual decline in Whiff% against all three pitch types. Those are at least encouraging developments when you want to see an uptick in production. Better contact and more elevation should, organically, lead to better results.
Of course, Lux is also in need of a bit more patience at the plate. A paltry 6.0 BB% is well below the mark he's posted in each of his last two seasons, and he's still managed to chase pitches at a high rate, even with improving contact trends. So while the trends may be encouraging, there's clearly more work to be done on Lux's part in order to start to get this thing moving in the right direction.
It's easy to want to be encouraged by a multi-hit effort from someone with the upside of Lux in awaiting the turning of a corner. However, it's worth noting that six of his 11 games with multiple hits have come in back-to-back contests. Another two of them were within three games of each other. These instances have been extremely concentrated, without a lot of stability. The hope is that the trends in June, which exceed either of the season's first two months prior, could lead to just that.
This hope is furthered by a .301 xBA for the month, in addition to the contact quality & whiff rate factors above. And again, we're talking about a player with limited big league run. He appeared in 102 games in 2021 and 129 in 2022. That's almost the full extent of his big league career prior to this season. The upside still exists almost to an antagonizing extent.
The context of someone like Gavin Lux simply means that each time we see a game like Saturday, the hope is that the breakout is finally on its way. Perhaps this time, it actually is.