Lux-ury?

Molly Knight at The Athletic:

Lux’s 2020 campaign was a train wreck.

He reported late to the Dodgers’ summer camp due to an unexplained absence, but he did reveal that he did not take part in baseball activities for two weeks. He began the season at the team’s alternate site at USC, and when he finally did get called up to the Dodgers, he looked like a mess. In 19 games, Lux had an OPS of .596. He made throwing errors that made it look like he had the yips. He was left off the postseason roster as the Dodgers went on to win the franchise’s first World Series title since 1988.

This year, the Dodgers can make do with some combination of Chris Taylor, Zach McKinstry and Max Muncy at second base in the event that Lux can’t immediately rebound from his disappointing 2020. But he is only 23 years old and can be forgiven for experiencing a lost season during the pandemic.

Cubs star Javier Báez said earlier this week that he simply was not mentally prepared for last season, and here’s betting Lux wasn’t, either. It’s not fair to judge anyone on how well they performed amid COVID-19. And that is why I’m excited to see if Lux can put last year behind him, secure the second base job and rake his way back into the hearts of Dodgers fans.

Today’s lineup, including one Trevor Bauer making his first start in Dodger Blue:

62 thoughts on “Lux-ury?

  1. The Dodgers better do all they can to resign Seager before this season gets too far along. We don’t want to do a repeat of Piazza or Beltre with him. However, with Boras as Seager’s agent, nothing will be easy.

  2. I hope we are getting all our kinks out this game against the Royals. We look positively amateurish.

  3. This is commendable:

    The Texas Rangers paid tribute to late country legend Charley Pride — the baseball player-turned-trailblazing country singer who also held a part-ownership stake in the MLB team — by naming a field at their spring training complex after him.

    [snip]

    Pride died December 12th, 2020 from complications related to Covid-19. At the time of his death, Pride was part of the ownership group that purchased the Texas Rangers in 2010; in the decade that followed, Pride frequently visited the team, including annual stops at the spring training facility.

      • Don Demeter (age 85) is the only survivor. Don Elston, whom I couldn’t recall at all, pitched one game for the 1957 Dodgers (the only non-Cubbie game in his career).

        • I still have Elston’s 1957 Topps card. As WBBsAs notes, one game for the Dodgers. And 449 for the Cubs. The Dodgers got him and “Handsome” Ransom Jackson from the Cubs after the ’55 season for Don Hoak, Russ Meyer and Walt Moryn, and then traded Elston back to the Cubs early in the ’57 season for Jackie Collum and Vito Valentinetti.

  4. Judging by his first inning today — three walks and a wild pitch, yet only one run — I wonder if Bauer is pitching with both eyes closed.

    • Actually, it was three walks and an HBP. Roberts bailed him out that by choosing to end the inning arbitrarily on pitch count.

      • Thanks for the correction on Bauer’s horrendous partial inning…That is a heckuva “wild card” option Roberts had!

  5. Gavin Lux news:

    The goal, he explained, was to make his gather and swing and gather at the plate more “repeatable.” Early results are promising. Lux entered Thursday five for 11 with a double in four games before going one for three with an RBI single against the Cincinnati Reds.

    “He just looks more comfortable,” Roberts said. “I think that, last year, again, the start and stop kind of got him a little bit. But, right now, there’s just been so much consistency in his work. He and the hitting guys are just all synced up. There’s clarity in his mind.”

    • I thought I had posted this, but I guess it didn’t go through. The 1959 World Series champion Dodgers included three players from my high school, Fairfax High in Los Angeles. Norm Sherry was one, although he spent most of the year in the minors and didn’t play in the World Series. His younger brother, Larry, four years Norm’s junior, was the World Series MVP after winning two of the games and saving the other two. Larry Sherry died in 2006. The third Fairfax player on that team was Chuck Essegian, who hit a pair of pinch-hit homers in the ’59 WS, a feat that was matched by Bernie Carbo of the Reds in 1975 against the Red Sox. The Sherry brothers and Essegian attended the school many years before I did. The first pinch-hit WS HR was by Yogi Berra of the Yankees against Dodger Ralph Branca in 1957. The Sherrys’ ancestors had escaped Russia in the wake of the anti-Semitic
      pogroms that followed the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II.

      • I recall Gil Hodges hitting a key homer, because a friend’s father (a former major leaguer) called the shot.

  6. Being so far away I don’t follow the team as closely as most of you all do. (Ie I have no idea who is in our minors teams for example)
    I look down at the box score from today and see a lot of surnames I just don’t recognize 🙂

  7. Being so far away I don’t follow the team as closely as most of you all do. (Ie I have no idea who is in our minors teams for example)
    I look down at the box score from today and see a lot of surnames I just don’t recognize 🙂

      • And for those of us who don’t speak or read Spanish, this appears to say that (former Dodger pitcher) Ismael Valdez is running for president of the city of his native Victoria. And he says that he is prepared to serve all segments of the society. Am I fairly close?

        • That’s pretty good. Not exactly sure what “presidente municipal” means in Mexico, whether it’s mayor or perhaps a county executive.

  8. Rachel Luba is Trevor Bauer’s agent. She will be interviewed on Sports Center today, and she was interviewed during one of the Dodger games a few days ago. I wrote a 25-part free-lance series last year for the Monterey Herald about Monterey County residents, past and present, who went into baseball. Only about half of them were about players. Here is the piece that I wrote about Ms. Luba:

    https://www.montereyherald.com/2020/04/25/baseball-lives-monterey-native-is-an-agent-and-a-pioneer/

  9. The Dodgers have a minor leaguer in camp named James Outman. He is playing today. Tough name for a baseball player….Jansen update today: 2 innings, 0 runs, 1 hit, 1 walk, 3 strikeouts. Dodgers up 9-0 after 5.

    • Correction: I should have known better than to trust an exhibition box score, which was wrong and has been fixed. Jansen worked only the one inning….The Dodgers “apparently” won the 6-inning affair, 10-0…I will take a break from periodic updates for spring training games. Just excited to know that they are playing again.

    • Outman would be a pretty good name for a pitcher, I’d think.

      Jansen – just one IP – barely missed an immaculate inning when his ninth pitch went for an infield grounder out.

  10. Bauer’s first appearance with the Dodgers: 2 innings, 0 runs, 2 strikeouts, 1 hit (a single), 0 walks, 1 wild pitch. Dodgers lead the Rockies 9-0 after four. Peters has hit a two-run homer. The Dodgers have 12 hits. Peters, Lux and Smith have two each. Gonsolin pitched one perfect inning, striking out 0. Jansen pitched one perfect inning, fanning 2.

      • I think Gnatfans have overrated their team ever since they fell just short of a participation trophy last year.