Tampa Bay Rays: Scouting Report on SS Lucius Fox

Scouting Report

More from Call to the Pen

• Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
• Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
• Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
• Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
• 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals

Body/Basics

Fox turned 18 the day of his signing. He is listed at 6’1 and 175 pounds. He’s a switch-hitter and throws right-handed. He is definitely long and lean in his build, and while he very possibly is done growing in height, he has the frame that could add another 25-30 “good” pounds without hurting his athleticism.

Hitting

Fox stands tall in the box with a short stride to the ball in his swing. He does have some motion in his hands in his set up, and in the games I saw, he ended up with his hands out of position when a guy came with premium velocity or had a hard breaking pitch that he wasn’t prepared for. He may need to calm his hands in the future to help his consistency in swing.

The swing is incredibly fast, and his wrists and hands have incredible speed to them. The bat path is solid, though he seems to swing as hard as humanly possible on every swing, and while that’s all well and good, part of maturing in the game is recognizing which pitches to go all out on and which to poke into right field, for instance.

One of the unique parts of scouting a switch-hitter is trying to find enough games of both sides of the plate to get a good review of both sides of the plate. Fox definitely is a guy with two different swings. From the right side, he leverages his swing and tends to dip his back elbow quite a bit, looking to get power. From the left side, Fox seems to understand that being in the lefty batter’s box allows him to utilize his incredible speed, so he has a more contact-oriented, level swing.

It’s also obvious in his pitch recognition from each side that Fox is a natural right-handed hitter. He has good pitch recognition, but his attempted leverage ends up costing him some hits. From the left side, his swing would allow him to handle pitches so well, but he seems to struggle with pitch recognition, especially hard breaking stuff at this time. His zone recognition is similar from either side of the plate as his walk rate is nearly identical. He strikes out more from the right side, but I would say that a lot of that has to do with the leverage in his swing, and going for the fences too much right now.

Base Running/Fielding

Here is where Fox currently shines, well above his first year in the league sort of maturity. Fox has 70- or 80-grade speed, depending on who is writing the scouting report. Regardless, that’s blazing fast. What I was most impressed by when watching Fox for this report was his maturity in using that speed on the base paths. Many speedsters just run wild and get caught stealing frequently due to their recklessness, yet Fox has been successful around 80% of the time he’s attempted a steal all season long. Watching him, he has great natural reads of pitchers, especially considering that he’s facing most of these pitchers for the first time when he’s on the bases, so it’s not as if he’s going on experience with a particular guy.

Fox also reads his teammates’ hits very, very well. I saw one play that absolutely blew me away where he scored from first on a slow-rolling single to center field where the infield was in, expecting a bunt, and the ball got past the middle infielders, who were drawn in and slowed significantly in the grass of the outfield. Even then, it’s a pretty remarkable jump and remarkable speed that can get all the way around from first to score on that play. The throw was high and the catcher didn’t have a chance at a play, but he beat the throw regardless, and I noted that as the ball bounced over second base, he was one step away from second base and at full speed. That means he got one heck of a jump on that ball. That was one example, but it was a frequent occurrence watching Fox on the bases.

In the field, Fox has an arm that I’ve seen rated from a 55 to a 65. I’d put it as a solid 60, but he’s got 65 arm strength for sure, but he has a bit of Rafael Furcal disease in that he knows he has that strong arm, and therefore, he launches a lot of balls that should just be put in his pocket. His arm will play up a lot once he makes those better decisions with the balls hit to him. He does use his long legs and speed to cover a ton of ground at shortstop as well. Outside of putting on bad weight or an injury, I certainly wouldn’t see a reason he’d need to move off of shortstop, in spite of a LOT of errors (32 in 75 games) this year, most of which I would attribute to the maturity issue I mentioned previously of trying to do too much with the skills he has.

Video

Next: Future outlook