Brad Martens / SF Giants
SCOTTSDALE — Mauricio Dubon wants to prove he can hit for more power and prove he can hit righty pitchers. The Giants also want to see him emerge as a reliable shortstop option behind Brandon Crawford.
Friday was a good day for making his cases.
A bigger, stronger, much-better-fed Dubon, facing (he believed) righty Silvino Bracho, launched a homer Dubon estimated went 450 feet. The farthest of his career outside Colorado, he specified.
“I feel I’m faster and explosive. Last year I was 168 [pounds] playing the season, right now I’m 180,” Dubon said Friday in his first Zoom session of the spring season. “You can see a big difference in how I’m moving, how the bat’s sounding.”
“Big” being the operative word, Dubon showing up in camp with more to him than left the club last September. The Giants asked him to bulk up, and the 26-year-old took it to heart and took it to his stomach. He said he was eating about 4,300 calories a day — the healthy kind; “I haven’t had McDonald’s in a long time,” he said — in trying to add some pop to a bat that mustered four homers and four doubles in 177 plate appearances last year.
“It was crazy how much I had to eat for me to put that weight on,” said Dubon, who credited his wife for help with the diet.
In a lot of ways, Dubon’s 2021 case is analogous with Mike Yastrzemski’s, who has been a godsend for the club but is being challenged to help more, in his case to prove he can complement/back up Dubon in center field.
Dubon showed he can be a solid center fielder last season in the career infielder’s first major league look in the outfield and also held his own at the plate, where he slashed .274/.337/.389 and improved as the season got longer. The Giants now want to see that slugging percentage boost up and also would love for him to demonstrate he can hit righties better than he has — as well as show he can spell Crawford for a club that severely is lacking behind him.
“He’s a really good defender over there,” Gabe Kapler said over Zoom of Dubon, who had been primarily a shortstop and second baseman in his minor league career. “… His clock at shortstop is a little bit shorter right now. His throws across the diamond have improved, they’ve stayed very straight. He’s composed and relaxed at the position. His athleticism is taking over. We really do believe that he’s a nice option for us behind Craw.”
The defense settled down last season once Dubon moved out of the infield, Crawford began playing every day and Dubon turned into an arguably above-average major league center fielder. The weight gain could help on defense, too, Kapler contended, with more lean tissue giving Dubon more to work with.
But the bat is where they hope the scale makes a big difference. In the small sample size that his career is, he has fared much better off southpaws, slashing .259/.311/.370 against righties.
Yes, he said, he’s read those stories about the Giants wanting a center-field partner who can better hit righties, with LaMonte Wade Jr., Yastrzemski and Austin Slater all expected to get time this spring.
“I see everything they’re saying that I can’t hit righties. That’s not true. Coming up in the minors, I hit against anybody who threw [righty],” said the Honduras native, who indeed has hit righties in the minors, though not better than lefties. (He batted .291 against righties in 2019.) “I just gotta get some time in there and show what I can do.”
The showcase has begun, punctuated with a blast Dubon was eager to share. Kapler saw Dubon’s approach evolve as last season went on and felt his at-bats generally got better, pointing to it as hope he can show he’s a weapon against righties, too.
“Now at the plate he’s a little bit more in his legs and looks to be in really calm position,” the manager said.
He talked, too, of seeing Dubon at second base and third base and perhaps as a defensive replacement. They’re throwing a lot at the super utility man, who is as confident as they come in believing he’ll excel wherever and against whomever.
“If he’s able to accomplish all those things,” Kapler said, “the ceiling’s really high for Mauricio.”
