Less than 24 hours after completing a satisfying comeback victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field, the Los Angeles Dodgers returned home with even more excitement on the horizon.
Prior to Monday’s series opener against the Colorado Rockies, the club promoted top prospect Gavin Lux to the active roster. The move was made official after the 21-year-old had garnered serious consideration for a call-up following a historic showing in the Minors.
Lux began his 2019 campaign with Double-A Tulsa and eventually worked his way up to Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he produced unworldly numbers while ascending into one of the sport’s most intriguing prospects.
His season-long efforts have led to a plethora of accolades. Lux was a Texas League All-Star, earned Pacific Coast League Player of the Month honors for July and even represented the Dodgers on the National League roster in the 2019 MLB Futures Game.
Having developed into a legitimate five-tool prospect, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts deemed there was hardly no downside with the decision to promote Lux, as seen on SportsNet LA:
“There’s really not a whole lot of downside. I think the benefits are the at-bat quality, the versatility that he potentially could give you, the speed aspect of it, giving him a runway, getting his feet wet at the big league level. There’s a lot of upside to this.”
As Roberts noted, there are plenty of good qualities in which Lux brings to the table. In addition to his hitting tools, the young infielder can impact a game with his speed. One example of this is that he has stolen at least 10 bases in each of his last three Minor League seasons.
And though he is a natural shortstop, Lux has expanded his defensive versatility by volunteering to play more second base this year. That’s seemingly paid off thus far as each of his starts with the Dodgers have come there in the wake of Max Muncy sustaining a wrist fracture.
In 113 overall games with the Drillers and OKC Dodgers this season, Lux batted .347/.421/.607 with 59 extra-base hits, 76 RBI and 10 stolen bases. He hasn’t produced at that level thus far with the Dodgers but did have a record-setting MLB debut.
