Gavin Lux is learning to trust again.

He was minding his own business one spring afternoon last year, running the bases during a Cactus League game, when his right knee betrayed him. The ACL and LCL had to be repaired by a surgery that kept him out of a batter’s box for the next year.

Back on the field this season, Lux’s knee was fixed but he still had to recover mentally. His knee might have been healthy but it took longer for his confidence in that knee to return.

The result were what he acknowledges were “safe swings” – the kind that didn’t put too much pressure on his knee and put the ball in play but resulted in a lot of ground balls rolled over to the right side or punchless fly outs.

He was putting the ball in play often enough. But it was weak contact.

“I wasn’t really locking out on my front leg as hard as I usually do. It was a lot softer,” Lux said of his protective mindset – conscious or subconscious. “Then I think early on it was trying not to punch or chase (to strike out). Just trying to put the ball in play. Hit singles and try to get on base where when I feel good it’s like, ‘Okay, I’m going up there looking to do damage.’ Especially those first two strikes then once you get to two strikes you’ve got to battle your (behind) off.

“I almost feel like I took that two-strike approach from pitch one. I was more being protective instead of saying, ‘(Expletive) it. We’re up there to hurt somebody.’ Then once you get to two strikes you shorten up and try to put the ball in play. It was almost like a two-strike mentality from 0-0. You’re just trying to survive and you can’t do that up here.”

In spring training, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said it would not be fair to judge Lux in his comeback season until he had at least 150 plate appearances under his belt. But Lux was still batting only .207 with a .542 OPS in early July, 264 plate appearances into his season.

That defensive approach was not what made Lux a first-round draft pick or one of the top prospects in baseball. There were times when he wondered if he had forgotten how to hit.

“Some days it felt like that, yeah,” he said. “I think in May and even early June it was really searching, searching, searching. There were some days where it was, ‘Man, I don’t know if I’m going to figure it out.’

“But there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. You just try to keep going and chip away. I think I was more patient with myself than I was in past years when I struggled. Just trying to keep a little bit of freshness every day and chip away when you get to the cage.”

The breakthrough began in the week before the All-Star break.

“I think it was gradual, things coming together. Even when I was struggling we still chipped away, put together some pieces that we felt would work,” Lux said. “Then I think in Philly (the final road trip before the All-Star break) it was, ‘I’m sick of rolling over. Let’s try to do damage.’”

Lux carried that mentally with him when he went home for the All-Star break and spent time with his uncle, Augie Schmidt. The Golden Spikes winner as the top amateur player in 1982 and the second overall pick in that year’s draft, Schmidt never made the major leagues, making him very familiar with the ups and downs of a baseball career. Head baseball coach at Carthage College in Wisconsin since 1988, he has been a baseball mentor for Lux.

“I talk to him a ton. But obviously he’s not here so it was tough to get a gauge on what I was doing every day, what I was feeling in the batter’s box,” Lux said. “We’d talk about it. But I think going back home during the All-Star break and getting to sit down and talk about hitting for a couple hours then go out and mess around with some things and just have a lot of free time to try a couple things, see what feels good, what doesn’t, where during the season you’ve got a game to play, you’ve got a million different things to do it’s hard to find that time. So I think the All-Star break helped a lot.”

Lux came out of the break and won the National League Player of the Week award. Since that pre-break series in Philadelphia, Lux has hit .385 (20 for 52) with a 1.162 OPS in 18 games. Most significantly, he has nine extra-base hits in that time (five doubles, four home runs) almost matching his total from his first 74 games of the season (12).

At a time when the Dodgers are searching for any offensive contributions they can get from a lineup stripped of Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy, Lux has “stepped up,” Roberts said. The biggest difference is “confidence” and Lux had to get there on his own.

“I think Brandon McDaniel, the training staff, you can tell him all you want (that his knee is healed), but the player has got to trust that when they’re in that moment. And watching him right now, he’s playing and moving as well as I’ve remembered,” Roberts said.

“What do they say? It takes a village. So it’s a lot of people, but most important it’s him to listen and trust it.”

Lux acknowledges that it took “a mental shift” to stop thinking about his knee and getting aggressive instead of protective.

“I think I finally have some mental peace that my knee is going to be fine and whatever happens, happens, I can’t control it,” he said. “If it happens again, I’m going to go down aggressive. That’s just kind of the type of approach I’ve taken with that, too.

“I go back and look at old videos when I feel good and the gather and the load and the swing looks a little more like if you’re playing in the backyard as opposed to just being safe. I think just looking at that, that stood out to me.”

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