If you’re around baseball at higher levels, you’ll hear the phrase “trust the process” used a lot around young players. A player’s process is how they prepare, and the work and mental focus that has been put into preparing for the competition that produces a result. If a player has enough talent, and a good “process”, they give themselves the best “odds” of creating the results they desire, and playing the “odds”, over the marathon of a baseball season, is the best “process” that any player can have.
This is why I love Minor League baseball so much because it allows young prospects, like Gavin Lux used to be, the time and space to focus on “the process” and learn to let the results follow.
1st Round Draft Pick
When a player like Lux is drafted in the first round, it’s easy to focus only on the results that the player produces because the expectations are that the player is “plug and play” to a larger extent than others. Lux was the 20th overall pick in the first round of the 2016 Draft and has always had those expectations follow him, and he’s done nothing but live up to them and more.
In 2018, between A and AA, he hit .324 with an OPS of .916 in 463 at-bats, then followed that in 2019 by hitting .347 between AA Tulsa and AAA OKC.
In Lux’s first 105 at-bats after he was promoted to AAA OKC he hit .457 with an OPS of 1.356 and built expectations that he was something of higher quality than human.
Lux created more momentum than any prospect in the game in 2019, so when Covid canceled 2020, and he only had 63 total at-bats that year, it was very unfortunate because it slowed his momentum substantially.
Great players like Gavin Lux are used to 4 or 5 at-bats a game, and they are used to those at-bats being the highest leverage of situations because they have always been the best players on their team. So, when those same players are put into a “role” player type role like Lux was in 2020, it is a major, major adjustment. They aren’t used to “spotty” playing time, so it’s very easy for them to press and start focusing on “results” instead of the “process”. When that happens, many times, the next thing they know they are hitting .175 and wondering what in the heck is going on because failure is not something they have ever had to deal with, at least to an extent of any significance.
This is where the Minor Leagues become so valuable, because when guys like Lux get sent down, they get to refocus on their process, and stop worrying about “results”. When that happens, and the player embraces that situation, they, most times, re-discover what has made them the elite player they have always been.
Lux Back in OKC
On July 18th of last year, Gavin Lux was hitting just .227 after hitting .195 in June, then just .214 in July. He was nursing a nagging hamstring injury, was surely battling his confidence, and seemed to be in need of an old-fashioned “reset”.
Just about every player that plays the game at the level of Lux, and who carries his expectations, goes through a period where they need some kind of a “reset”, and he got one when he was sent down to OKC to get healthy and to work on his game.
Lux had been placed on the 10-Day Injured list on July 19th due to a left hamstring strain and was on the shelf until August 8th when he made his first appearance with AAA OKC. Things started out well as he hit .318 in his first 22 at-bats in AAA, then got promoted back to LA. but went hitless in the 7 at-bats back with the big club and was sent back down to OKC where things got worse before they got better.
Lux was 0-5 in his first game back in AAA, and, as you can see in the picture, he was under the ball causing him to swing and miss and roll over a bunch of balls. That picture of him swinging under the ball was taken on August 28th, and this is when his entire season changed. The next day Lux started his comeback and got 2 hits, then had hits in 6 of his last 9 games in OKC and got called back up to LA where he hit .367 in September with an OPS of .976.
Lux had gotten back over the ball, as the picture on the right shows, and was back to his usual great offensive ways.
This is what Lux told Dodger’s Daily about the situation
I think, over the course of the last couple of years, I lost sight of the “process” and got extremely consumed in results. Even if I barreled a ball, or had a great at-bat and didn’t get the result I wanted, I would press. This year, I feel like the better at-bats I can compile, the results will take care of themselves without me pressing for them!
The results certainly were there last year as the talented young infielder hit .276 and showed more than just flashes of the type of player he has the potential to become.
Future with Lux
It is important to remember that Lux is still just 25 years old, has shown elite offensive ability at every level he has played, including the MLB level, and is an awesome young person. As much “hype” as this kid has had to handle, he actually has “outproduced” just about any expectation any reasonable person could have for a young player.
Gavin Lux is a great player who used the Minor Leagues to create a process that allowed him to be, quite possibly, the best player in the Minor Leagues in 2019, but, then, also be able to handle some adversity, then failure since. He has used his “process” to get back to where he belongs, and that is, being a great player in the MLB.
