Last night the Cincinnati Reds made another trade, this time by acquiring Gavin Lux from the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for a prospect and a 2025 draft pick. We wrote about that here if you want to read a little more detail about Lux. A bit after the trade was announced, President of Baseball Operations Nick Krall met with the local media to discuss the trade. Below is the entire transcript of the session – with a note that the questions asked have been paraphrased, while all of the answers from Krall are exactly as stated.
When the Dodgers signed Hyeseong Kim, did that give the club the idea that they could get Gavin Lux for a decent return?
We talked about it a couple of weeks ago. We knew he was available and we knew they were trying to get somebody else – we didn’t know exactly who. We talked about it internally. Jeff Graupe (Vice President, Assistant GM, Player Acquisition and Strategy) did a good job of keeping tabs with them on where they were with it and it came about over the last probably handful of days. Mostly since they signed (Kim).
How does he fit positionally into what you guys are doing?
If you look at our team last year, people argue that we had too many infielders to begin the year and obviously that didn’t play itself out. We were last in WAR in third base, first base, and DH. So if he comes in, and we look at him as a guy who is going to play some second base, play some outfield, play some DH in spring training – we’ll also give him a look at second, third, and short and see where it is and see where he is defensively with all those positions. We think he’s a quality left-handed hitter that just lengthens our lineup out.
Does that mean McLain in center more?
No, we’ll figure that out in spring training. Just being able to add a cost controlled left-handed hitter that has hit well against right-handed pitching. There’s an interesting article at Fangraphs that Jay Jaffe wrote about him and some of the changes he made in the second half, which was interesting. Just trying to swing harder, do a little more damage. I think he had the 13th highest wRC+ in the second half. With him it’s just a guy that we feel has a chance to come in and lengthen that lineup out.
Did you have eyes on him in the second half?
We did. We saw him in the second half. We’ve got guys that scout games, and our analytic guys as well. We definitely had eyes on him.
Do you guys envision needing more bats than Gavin Lux? Are you still looking for more offense?
Year. If we can add somebody to better our club, we’re going to look at it. We’re going to look at any ways we to continue to make this club the best we possibly can.
It looks like just doing back of the napkin math that you guys might be approaching, roughly, your budget. How much flexibility do you have left?
We have a little bit, not a ton. I think we’re just kind of working through that right now. We looked at trading the draft pick saved us some money there instead of trading a prospect and picking a player. We can put that into Major League payroll as well.
How much do you think the knee injury (torn ACL) played into his slow start besides the change he made?
Obviously coming off of an ACL tear and missing the whole year you’re going to have some ups and downs. It probably played some. I haven’t talked to him – I know Brad (Meader – Senior Vice President, General Manager) and Tito (Francona) talked to him. But I think that you’re hoping that’s part of it. He’s a guy with really good upside. Even still with where he is right now, he still has some room to run to get better.
His speed took a dip after his injury. Do you see that last year was maybe getting that one year back or just someone getting older and slower?
I think when you have leg injuries it’s going to slow you down a little bit, not sure he’s going to come back to being the burner that he was. But at the same time you never know, some of those guys it takes a little while and they get that speed back once they get more comfortable on their legs.
With the TV situation playing out as it has, and how it’s seemingly kept a lot of teams from doing much how do you think you guys stack up within the division where all but one team of the other four haven’t really added anything from the outside?
We’ve got a good division. The Brewers were really good last year. The Cubs have added some players. The Cardinals still have some good players. The Pirates made some additions, obviously they have their pitching staff, and they added Horowitz that they added from Toronto. We look it as we’ve got about six more weeks of the offseason left and we’re going to try to do the best we can to improve this club.
Do you envision Lux possibly playing in the outfield at all?
Like I said before we’re going to look at him at second base, the outfield, DH, some shortstop and third base in spring training and see what works and what doesn’t. It’s going to sort itself out in spring training where best everyone fits to go into the season.
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