8 best Dodgers under 25 years old on 40-man roster

Dustin May and Gavin Lux

The grand finale. And the uncertainly surrounding these two might be too much for some Dodgers fans to handle.

Let’s stay with May. The 24-year-old dubbed “Gingergaard” because of his comparison to Noah Syndergaard while sporting red hair, suffered a torn UCL in May and underwent Tommy John surgery. We might be seeing him until the second half of the 2022 season, assuming his recovery continues on its positive trajectory.

Before the injury, the right-hander was believed to be a top-of-rotation arm being deployed out of the back end of the rotation due to his career 2.93 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and 111 strikeouts in 31 games (19 starts), totaling 113.1 innings. His fastball, sinker, cutter and curve make up a vaunted arsenal that major league hitters have largely had trouble figuring out (7.4 hits/9 and 1.2 HR/9).

With his career thrown off course for about a year and a half, the Dodgers are hoping for a rebound given what was expected of the former 2016 third-round pick.

Lux is kind of in the same boat … but without the injury concern and with much less production. Sky-high expectations … but no proof of them panning out just yet. And that’s why 2022 will be a pivotal year for the 24-year-old. In 144 career games, the lefty-hitting middle infielder (and now outfielder?) has hit just .233 with a .682 OPS, 69 runs scored (sick, bro!), 12 homers, 63 RBI and seven stolen bases. That’s since debuting in 2019.

Many thought he’d be dangled at the trade deadline before he suffered an injury because his bat failed to show much of anything during the first half of the year outside of a couple of hot stretches. It was even more concerning that he was unable to find his footing despite being protected by one of the best offenses in the league. And then his move to the outfield later in the year indicated that the Dodgers might be done trying to make him a key figure in the middle infield (as do the offseason Carlos Correa rumors).

A make-or-break campaign at 24 years old sounds harsh, but such is life when you’re working to be trusted by a premier MLB organization. Whatever Lux’s role is in 2022, he’ll have to turn heads or else he will be deemphasized further or traded to another team that could use young middle infield help.

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