Reds’ Nick Krall on the Gavin Lux trade with the Dodgers
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.
