The Reds added to their infield glut Monday, acquiring Gavin Lux in a trade from the Dodgers that mostly elicits a “huh” – if not shouts of outright disdain from the Fantasy Baseball community.
The Reds have had too many infielders for too few spots for a few years, and now they’re adding a 2B-only player who … might not be an upgrade for them? Lux is coming off a season where he hit .251/.320/.383 while being mostly shielded from the toughest left-handed pitchers, though he did significantly more damage than that in the second half after a swing change, hitting .304/.390/.508.
The Reds are surely betting that Lux can do something like that again, and the good news for Fantasy is, he’s landing in a home park that will give him the best possible chance to do so, as Cincinnati remains one of the best parks for hitters in the league. As a middle infielder, Lux is a decent late-round bet, though one who should be more of a fallback than a target.
What this means for the rest of the Reds remains to be seen. They’ve put together a decent young core, with a lot of overlapping skill sets, but also enough flexibility to make it work. And hey, it’s never a bad thing to have fallback options when you’re trying to build a team, especially with so few sure things on the roster.
The question is who the fallback options become – I think we can assume Elly De La Cruz (duh) is locked in at shortstop, and Lux should at least get the lion’s share of time at 2B. We were assuming Matt McLain was the likely second baseman before this, so maybe this means the experiment with him playing center field in the Arizona Fall League went well. If McLain can capably handle the big outfield spot, that makes the whole thing look a lot more straightforward – and would keep him Fantasy relevant for sure.
However, this move does make his current price in drafts – 98.0 in December drafts at the NFBC platform – harder to stomach. If he plays everyday, McLain has 20-plus homer, 20-plus steal upside, something he showed by going 16-14 in just 89 games back in 2023. However, there are questions about the power and plate discipline even beyond the fact that he missed all of last season with shoulder and rib injuries, and the power questions would certainly be exacerbated if the Reds turned around and traded him to a park with less friendly dimensions.
If McLain can’t hang in center field, then it becomes a lot harder to see how he finds everyday at-bats without a trade. Does he have the arm to be a full-time third baseman? Is he just a part-time player alongside Lux? It would be hard to justify even a top-150 pick on McLain if he doesn’t have an obvious path to everyday playing time on Opening Day.
There’s further fallout here for the likes of Noelvi Marte, Jeimer Candelario, Will Benson, Jake Fraley, and TJ Friedl, though none of those guys are likely to be drafted as anything other than bench pieces even in deeper Fantasy leagues – though all could be Fantasy relevant with everyday at-bats.
That looks harder to project for any of them at this point, and Marte might have had a tough time getting everyday opportunities in Cincinnati even before this, given how disastrous his 2024 was. Moving Marte would be a fairly obvious move for a Reds team still looking for pitching help, though how much they could realistically expect to get in return for him at this point is a very fair question. Marte still has some deep sleeper appeal for Fantasy – the 23-year-old hit .316/.366/.456 and looked like a potential star in his 2023 debut – but it’s hard to justify anything more than a final-round pick on him at this point.
On the Dodgers side of things, they received a 21-year-old outfielder named Mike Sirota who the Reds picked in the third round of the 2024 MLB Draft, plus the No. 37 pick in next year’s draft. Given the Dodgers track record, they’ll surely turn both of them into core pieces in due time, but at least for 2025, the impact of this deal is more in how it clears space on the team’s roster, and there could be one nice outcome here for Fantasy players.
With the recent signing of Korean star Hyeseong Kim, the Dodgers got a player fully capable of playing either middle infield spot, and likely at a high level. While Dodgers GM Brandon Gomes did tell reporters earlier in the offseason that Mookie Betts is preparing to play shortstop, he’s probably better suited for the less taxing of the middle infield spots, with an arm that rated out around average for a SS along with well-below-average range. If Kim, a Golden Glove winner in Korea, can play an MLB-caliber shortstop, Betts could quickly regain 2B eligibility for Fantasy – he’s eligible at SS and OF to open the 2025 campaign, the two deepest positions in Fantasy, so that would be a nice bonus.
This also seems like it should push Kim into late-round consideration for Roto leagues, at least. He probably won’t hit for much power at all – he had just 11 homers in the KBO last season, his career high, compared to a KBO high of 30 for Ha-Seong Kim – but he could be a solid source of batting average and steals if he plays everyday. The Dodgers do have the flexibility to move Tommy Edman between CF, 2B, and SS, so we could see plenty of juggling in Spring Training, but if Kim looks like he’s an everyday option for them, he could be a cheap source of speed and average in the final rounds.
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