Gavin Lux goes from sleepless nights to leading the NL in hitting

At this point last year, Gavin Lux was going home after games, struggling to sleep and staring at the ceiling.

“I’d go home at night, and I’d be like, ‘Am I ever going to be able to do it again?’”

“There were a lot of sleepless nights,” Lux said. “I didn’t know if I’m ever going to be the same.”

He was still just 26 years old, but there was a mountain of pressure weighing on him. Lux missed the entire 2023 season with a torn ACL. When he returned in 2024, he didn’t feel like himself.

Lux entered last season expecting to be the Dodgers’ starting shortstop of the present and the future. LA’s plan for the long run was Freddie Freeman at first base, Mookie Betts at second base and Gavin Lux at short. Lux was on one of the most talented baseball teams in recent memory, and you don’t have much time to be patient when expectations are that high.

Lux was struggling to make consistent throws from shortstop, so Dodgers manager Dave Roberts moved Lux to second base during spring training. During the first half of the 2024 season, Lux posted a poor .225 batting average as well as a .610 OPS.

“It’s a pressure cooker,” Lux said. “They tried to move me back to shortstop, and I just didn’t have my legs under me. I didn’t have enough time to really figure anything out. It’s tough knowing you’re expected to win games and you don’t even feel healthy. You’re still trying to figure out what your knee can and can’t do.”

What was his low point in 2024?

“Oh my God,” Lux said. “That whole first half.”

Clayton Kershaw gave Lux a lot of advice. So did Freeman. Lux tried to pick the brains of his teammates who had previously had surgery and had experienced coming back from substantial injuries.

Lux’s best resource was his fiance, Molly.

“She saw me at my lowest points,” Lux said. “She helped me a lot day-to-day get through what I was going through. She helped me more than anyone.”

Molly happens to be a physical therapist. She had plenty of experience working with people who were coming back from torn ACLs.

“She’d reassure me that this was normal,” Lux said.

Molly told him, “You don’t understand, but I’ve seen this from a different perspective, and it takes 16-to-24 months to feel normal again.”

Lux wanted to give himself some grace, but that’s not easy in an environment like the Dodgers where it’s World Series or bust and where there’s enough depth for you to lose your spot at any moment.

He had a long way to go. Even the little things in the game were a challenge for him.

“It was a struggle,” Lux said. “The pivots. Pushing off that leg. Changing direction. All of that stuff. It didn’t really feel normal.”

Because of some other injuries and because some of the Dodgers’ other options at second base were having tough years, Roberts stuck with Lux at second base through his struggles. Around July, Roberts saw Lux’s mindset change.

“He had to get his playing legs and timing back,” Roberts said. “At one point, he just said, ‘(Forget) it.’ I’m just going to play baseball. He freed himself up mentally.”

During the second half of the 2024 season, Lux was a top-20 hitter in baseball, posting a .899 OPS.

At first, Lux didn’t even realize that he was getting hot and getting back to being himself.

“You’re just unconscious, and you don’t realize it in the moment,” Lux said. “You feel more confident, obviously, when you start to barrel up balls. That confidence definitely builds, but you don’t really realize it until you look back at the end of the year. I was just focused on that task at hand. Just trying to help the team win.”

In the playoffs with the Dodgers, Lux recognized that the struggles that he went through at the start of the 2024 season taught him some important lessons. He had learned how to deal with pressure and figured out how to approach the highs and lows.

In the clinching Game 5 of the World Series, Lux found himself up at the plate in the eighth inning with the bases loaded and the Dodgers down by a run. Lux stepped up to the plate to face Yankees star reliever Luke Weaver, who was nearly unhittable in the playoffs.

“That’s as high pressure and as anxiety filled of an at-bat as you can have,” Lux said.

In a full-count, Lux ripped a deep fly ball to center field for a sacrifice fly that tied the score. The Dodgers went on to take the lead and win the championship that night.

“With everything I went through last year, it made that even more sweet,” Lux said.

After the World Series, Lux said that he was so exhausted that he didn’t even want to do anything. He took a few weeks to “sit on the couch” and be around friends and family. With the way that the 2024 season tested him, all that he wanted to do was unwind.

He went on to have a normal offseason from a training perspective. Entering 2024, Lux didn’t pick up a weight or even swing a bat until late January. Entering 2025, Lux had all of that time that he needed to train in the weight room as well as build up more lower body strength instead of exclusively doing physical therapy.

Then between December and January, the Dodgers flexed their financial firepower and signed three every day players who slotted ahead of Lux in the lineup. They then traded Lux to the Reds over the winter to replenish their farm system.

When Lux arrived at Reds’ spring training, he could have taken his strong second half from the previous year as a sign that he had arrived as a hitter. Instead, he focused on making adjustments and taking another step. Lux still has very high expectations for his ceiling as a player.

Lux has a much more narrow and open stance this season, and he tweaked his mechanics to help him “use (his) core a bit better and getting in a better position to hit posture wise.”

Through the first month of this season, Lux leads the entire National League with a .352 batting average.

“His at-bats are tremendous,” Reds manager Terry Francona said. “I even thought at the beginning of the year when he didn’t have much to show for it that he was swinging the bat great. He’s not afraid to see pitches. He’s not afraid to go deep into the count. When he hits the ball the other way like that — and you’ve heard me say that about all of the guys — it makes him pretty dangerous.”

Lux was a middle infielder for nearly the entirety of his big league career before 2025. This year with the Reds, he’s mostly playing third base and left field. His versatility has been a big factor in lengthening out the Reds’ lineup, and Lux has made just about all of the plays so far this year.

He gives the Reds the type of pedigree, know-how, winning experience and consistency that this young team needed.

“How he approaches his work and how he goes about his business has been really cool to watch,” TJ Friedl said. “You see it translate onto the field his at-bats and his approach against each pitcher. It’s very mature. Very advanced. He’s a great clubhouse guy and a great guy to have around, and that’s the cherry on top.”

After changing teams, Lux went from one of the least experienced players in the Dodgers’ lineup to one of the most experienced players in the Reds’ lineup. He has about as much playoff experience as anyone on the team, and he recognizes the opportunity to make a bigger impact behind the scenes.

For example, Matt McLain is coming off of an injury that forced him to miss an entire season and is off to a slow start. Lux knows exactly what that’s like. He’s passing forward the advice that Freeman and Kershaw were giving to him last season.

“When other guys go through struggles like (I had), I can relate as well as anybody,” Lux said. “You go through those struggles, and it can only help you as a player. It sets you up for whatever you’re going to do as a player because baseball is so up and down. Going through that struggle, as bad as it was, can only help in the future.”