Feature Photo: Gavin Lux, 2B/SS, Dodgers
Editor’s Note: 2080 Baseball is publishing weekly profiles of former Perfect Game All-Americans as they progress through the professional ranks. The series will be published each Wednesday and run through the 2017 Perfect Game National Showcase, to be held June 16-21 in Fort Myers, FL. We’d also like to offer our special appreciation to David Rawnsley, vice president of player personnel for Perfect Game, and Patrick Ebert, PG’s managing editor and scout, for their contributions to the PG in the Pros series. – Mark Shreve
About a month into this season, Gavin Lux, the Dodgers’ 2016 first-round draft pick (#20 overall), decided it was time for a “slump shower.” At that point, he was hitting a paltry .128 for the Class A Great Lakes Loons of the Midwest League, and it was time to hit the reset button.
After going hitless on May 8, Lux climbed into the Kane County Cougars’ visitor’s clubhouse shower in full uniform and took his time washing away the first four weeks of futility.
Lux, at 19 years old, is more than two years younger than most of his opponents, but he enjoys the challenge and experience of both facing, and playing alongside, older players. It was those elder statesmen in his locker room who advised the full-uniform slump shower after he had gone 0-fer yet again.
And it worked. Just a few nights later on May 11, Lux went 4-for-5 in a 7-3 win over the Clinton LumberKings, and since that slump shower, his batting average has climbed more than 100 points to .231, and he’s remained patient at the plate, with a 21:36 BB:SO rate to-date, working deep into counts and generating a .320 on-base percentage while the hit tool develops.
Lux says having older teammates around him has been especially beneficial during his early-season struggles at the plate.
“I have a lot of supportive teammates. Guys who are a little older who have gone through it,” Lux said.
The talented infielder is still just a year removed from things like prom and his high school graduation, and in the midst of trying to figure out Class A pitching, he needed a reminder of how far he had come over the past 12 months.
“It’s been a total 180-degree whirlwind. One of my hitting coordinators reminded me, ‘You know where you were last year?’” Lux said. “Just thinking back to last year in high school baseball in Wisconsin and seeing where I’m at now, it’s a big jump.”
Lux also leans on support from his uncle, Augie Schmidt, who was taken by the Blue Jays in the first round (#2 overall) of the 1982 MLB First-Year Player Draft. Schmidt, who spent five seasons in the minors and reached as high as Triple-A, now coaches baseball at Carthage College in Kenosha and serves as Lux’s primary advisor on all baseball matters.
“He’s my go-to hitting coach, and he’s been my go-to for everything: hitting, fielding, and baseball in general,” Lux said.
Schmidt’s advice for Lux during the coldest stretch on offense that Lux has ever experienced was simple.
“He told me I needed to make sure I stayed off the mental roller coaster,” Lux said.
That advice that helped him stay focused and calm during a first month of the season when his batting average was as low as .111, and even during the first week of May, when Lux was hitting only 17 points better. Despite the slow start in May, Lux hit .271 for the month, and he is starting to show the skillset that made him an attractive selection for the Dodgers at the 20th overall pick last season.
The Kenosha, Wisc., native doesn’t hail from a hotbed of baseball talent. He is the only product of Indian Trail High School to be selected in the MLB Draft since the school’s founding in 1998. Lux was able to overcome playing in relative obscurity by attending showcases with Perfect Game early in his school career. He rose quickly into a blue-chip prospect.
“I played in my first Perfect Game tournament in the fall of my sophomore year of 2014, and then they invited me to the national showcase in Florida, and I did well in that, so they invited me to the 2015 PG All-American Classic in San Diego,” Lux said.
Scouts at the Perfect Game showcases quickly noticed Lux’s defense up the middle first. Then, as he added size and showed off his hit tool, Lux put himself on the national radar as a prospect with projection on both sides of the ball.
“I anticipate that he will be a high-level second baseman,” Perfect Game’s vice president of player personnel, David Rawnsley, said of Lux. “In high school, that was what stood out to scouts. They saw him as a high-average hitter, but he really stood out defensively before the strength came.”
In those early tournaments with Perfect Game, Lux was a slender 6’2”, 170-pounds, but even before he began to fill out his frame, he produced well enough to be invited to Perfect Game’s top amateur showcases, including the national showcase held in the third week of June each year in Jupiter, Florida.
“That’s the gold standard,” Rawnsley said, referring to the Florida showcase. “He first came strongly on our radar there; he was playing really well against high-level competition in 2015.”
For as well as Lux was hitting and playing defense in June 2015, he knew he still needed to add strength to drive the ball better for extra base hits and home runs. During the fall and winter of his senior year in high school, Lux worked hard in the weight room and put on 15 pounds going into his final season at Indian Trail. The added size, Rawnsley believes, helped make the difference in Lux being drafted in the first round instead of the second or third rounds.
Rawnsley also theorized that Lux was of particular appeal to the Dodgers because he fits the mold of other players they have drafted out of high school. He compared Lux to current Dodgers’ phenoms Corey Seager (shortstop, and 2016 NL Rookie of the Year) and Cody Bellinger (first base, and May 2017 NL Rookie of the Month), both of whom are also left-handed hitters with skills-first profiles taken straight out of high school. Rawnsley said that Lux showed similar qualities to Seager and Bellinger while in high school.
“He follows the profile of the guy with skills and promising tools, rather than the toolsy guy you have to teach the skills,” Rawnsley said.
Lux, who won’t turn 20 years old until November, has the time to mature in the Dodgers’ farm system. This season, Lux said that he is working, in particular, on his bat path so that he can get the ball into the air more often, a change in hitting approach that has been a recent trend among several major league player developments staffs. Lux is still in the early stages of making this change, however.
“It’s one of the main focuses in early cage work and BP,” Lux said. “But in the game, I just go out there and hit.”
Lux also said that he is working on developing his plan at the plate, as one of the adjustments that he has had to make to being in full-season professional ball this year is learning how opposing pitchers are approaching him.
“Guys here definitely have a better idea of what they want to do pitching-wise. They’re a little older, a little more advanced, so it’s definitely tougher,” Lux said. “I’m working on my approach, on understanding what they’re trying to do to me. They have a better plan, so you have to match that.”
As he is developing his hit tool, Lux’s defense has remained steady. For Great Lakes, he has split his time equally between second base and shortstop, but his natural skill set is probably a better fit at second base. Lux’s strengths defensively are lateral movement getting rid of the ball quickly, skills that make him well-suited for the position, whereas shortstops are typically better at charging the ball, and throwing on the run more often.
Lux is likely to spend this season in the Midwest League because of his age, but he is starting to show that he can use his natural skills to adapt and adjust in order to better utilize his tools, which is exactly what the Dodgers drafted him to do.
