WASHINGTON — The distance between Gavin Lux and his days as a hot prospect tearing through the Dodgers’ farm system has grown long, stretched out by a season lost to a major knee injury and a .148 start in his comeback this season.
But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts gave the still-young infielder a vote of confidence before Wednesday’s game, saying it’s too soon to overreact to a slow start or cut Lux’s playing time. Anything less than 150 plate appearances is not “a fair gauge,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers got offense from top (Mookie Betts had four hits and Shohei Ohtani had three doubles) to bottom (Andy Pages had three hits, including a home run) on Wednesday night.
But Lux (almost halfway to Roberts’ marker now) might have needed his share more than anyone. He had two of the Dodgers’ 20 hits (eight doubles) Wednesday and drove in two runs as the Dodgers beat the Washington Nationals, 11-2, for their third consecutive win – a return to vigor of their own after a 2-6 stretch at home.
The multi-hit game was Lux’s first since March 30. The two RBIs on a single in the fifth inning doubled his RBI total for the season.
It was a reversal of fortune for Nationals starter Jake Irvin, who held the Dodgers scoreless on four hits in six innings at Dodger Stadium last week. The Dodgers’ first 10 hitters topped that hit total in their second look at Irvin who took his lumps this time, giving up 12 hits before Nats manager Davey Martinez came to get him in the fifth inning.
The Dodgers scored in the first inning when Ohtani doubled and scored on Will Smith’s two-out RBI single. In the second inning, Lux lit the fire with his first single. Pages followed with a double and both scored on Betts’ single.
Smith doubled and scored on Max Muncy’s RBI single in the third and the Dodgers knocked Irvin out of the game with Lux’s two-run single in the fifth.
Meanwhile, rookie starter Landon Knack did a much better job than Irvin of repeating his half of their matchup last week.
In that one, Knack gave up two first-inning runs in his major-league debut then retired 10 consecutive batters, finishing five innings with just that early damage.
This time, he lost touch with the strike zone in the second inning, loading the bases and walking in a run after giving up a second-inning home run to Nick Senzel. But he retired the final 13 batters he faced, finishing six innings with no further damage and claiming his first major-league win.
The Dodgers put the game away with two runs in the eighth on back-to-back doubles by Betts and Ohtani after a solo home run by Pages and three more in the ninth.