Lux learning with Dodgers
The Dodgers are not for everyone. Sometimes, young players need to leave when they become eligible for free agency if they want regular playing time. And sometimes, accomplished players are brushed aside because the Dodgers have the ability and the will to acquire other, more accomplished players.
Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt famously said, “It’s great to be young and a Yankee.”
To be young and a Dodger in an era of free agency, analytics, financial largess and sustained winning means sometimes reluctantly shuffling onto the injured list as the club manipulates its roster during the six-month grind of a regular season, or shuttling back to the minor leagues even if you were a contender for the rookie of the year Award.
Gavin Lux, who started Tuesday’s Game 3 of the National League Championship Series that ended too late for this edition, became familiar with the latter this summer. One of the top prospects in a system that has produced two recent rookies of the year in Cody Bellinger (2017) and Corey Seager (2016), Lux hit .286 with five homers and 19 RBIs in May but swooned later in the summer and wasn’t getting the regular playing time he would have in a place like Pittsburgh.
So on Aug. 26, the Dodgers shipped him back to Triple-A Oklahoma City.
“It’s pretty easy to look around the league and say, like, ‘Oh yeah, maybe on this team I wouldn’t have gotten sent down,’ obviously,” Lux said. “But there’s a lot of really good people here to learn from, a lot of really good players to learn from, and guys who have been around and a lot of superstars, Hall of Famers.
“So for me it’s, like, looking at it as a blessing as opposed to the other way around. And I’m still early in my career, so I’m just a being a sponge and trying to soak up as much as I can from these guys.”
Maybe one day Lux will grow into a mainstay like Seager or Justin Turner — a process that could be accelerated considerably should Seager leave the Dodgers as a free agent this offseason. Or, maybe Lux will become an October star for the Dodgers and still wind up somewhere else, like a handful of others scattered around this month.
Four years ago, Kiké Hernandez belted three homers for the Dodgers in Game 5 of the NLCS against the Cubs, helping push the Dodgers into the World Series.
But his path to regular playing time with the Dodgers was stymied by the team’s belief in platooning, and then was cut off entirely by players like Mookie Betts and Bellinger in the outfield and Seager and Max Muncy in the infield. So Hernandez signed a two-year, $14 million deal with the Red Sox as a free agent before the 2021 season. Hernandez has emerged as the Red Sox’s top weapon.