The Los Angeles Dodgers are in a position to advance to the National League Championship Series for the first time since 2021 with a win on Friday and that is in no small part due to the contributions of Gavin Lux, who has been quietly having an excellent postseason through four games.
Lux has had one of the strangest seasons in recent memory for the Dodgers in 2024, losing the starting shortstop job before the season began and struggling mightily at the plate through the first half of the season.
Then everything began to click for him in the middle of July as he became one of the Dodgers’ hottest hitters. Lux hit .297 in July and August, raising his average for the season from .207 on July 10 to .252 on Aug. 31.
He cooled off toward the end of the regular season, but he has been one of the Dodgers’ unsung heroes in the NLDS. He was instrumental in L.A.’s Game 4 win, reaching base three times and providing insurance runs with his two-run home run in the seventh inning.
With the suffocating pressure that comes with taking postseason at-bats, Lux has been employing some advice he got from former Dodgers teammate Justin Turner back during his first taste of playoff baseball.
“But I think just over the years you try to take the 4-for-4 approach, when you’re walking up to the plate and you’re 4-for-4, you feel really good,” Lux said. “J.T. told me that in my postseason in ’19. He said, ‘Try to go up there feeling like you’re 4-for-4 every at-bat, and try not to lose that feeling.’ That’s the best piece of advice I’ve gotten that I’ve tried to incorporate.
“I think I’ve gotten better at doing it over the course of these last couple of postseasons I’ve got to be a part of. And trying to enjoy it.”
It has been a good piece of advice for Lux who is having the best postseason of his career so far, batting .333/.353/.533 and only striking out twice in 15 at-bats.
With some postseason experience under his belt five seasons into his young career, Lux has also seen a noticeable shift in the Dodgers’ attitude in this series, which could be contributing to his success.
“I missed last year obviously, so I can’t speak on that, but ’22, they came out and beat us down pretty good,” Lux said. “And I think we kind of folded a little bit, where this year it feels like we’re going to fight back no matter what.
“And I think that’s kind of the difference between this year and ’22 is just the guys in the clubhouse. I think we’re hungry to prove people wrong.”
Gavin Lux helping to set up big innings by getting on base
Through four games of the NLDS, the Dodgers have been at their best when the bottom three spots in the lineup are able to put traffic on the base paths ahead of Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Teoscar Hernández.
Both of the Dodgers’ wins in this series have come when the bottom of the lineup is productive, but they will need to figure out how to do it on Friday against Yu Darvish, who shut down the their lineup in Game 2.
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