The Cincinnati Reds seem to be close to acquiring Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Gavin Lux according to Jeff Passan of ESPN. Cincinnati is sending the Dodgers outfielder Mike Sirota and their competitive balance round A pick in the 2025 draft (following the 1st round). Sirota was the team’s 3rd round pick out of Northeastern in 2024. He did not play after the draft and was also the Dodgers 16th round draft pick in 2021, but didn’t sign.
Lux, formerly one of the top prospects in all of baseball, has been solid but unspectacular in his big league career. He has played in 100+ games in three of the last four years – missing all of 2023 with an injury. In both 2022 and 2024 he was slightly better than the league average as a hitter, posting an OPS+ of 109 in 2022 and a 101 mark in 2024.
In 2024 the infielder had two drastically different halves. In the first half he managed to put up a .562 OPS with 13 extra-base hits. Things went much better in 61 games in the second half. Down the stretch, Lux hit .304/.391/.508 with 23 extra-base hits and a much better walk rate than he had in the first half. His strikeout rate, though, was also up from where it had been in the first half. As a left-handed hitter, he doesn’t quite balance out the lineup as much as a righty would, but lefties also tend to hit a bit better in Great American Ball Park and that could play to both his advantage as well as the Reds.
Cincinnati has some options with Gavin Lux. While he has mainly played the infield in his career, with most of his time coming at second base, he has spent some time in the outfield. Much of that time has been spent in left field (39 games), with a few games in center and a few innings in right field.
You can see the career stats for Gavin Lux right here.
But perhaps the Reds have something else in mind. Lux can play second base, which would move Matt McLain somewhere else on the field. Maybe that is third base. But maybe it’s center fielder where he played as a freshman at UCLA and got a little bit of time a few months ago in the Arizona Fall League.
With the amount of guys that Cincinnati has that play third base, maybe that’s an area that they could better fill out from all of those options while trying to improve their offense from the outfield by sliding McLain there.
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