Dubon is good defensively, but horrible offensively. He's not a substantial defensive upgrade at any one position on this team. Dubon and Chas rate very similarly in CF.
2022 CF baseball savant metrics. Outs above average: Meyers 7, Chas 6, Dubon -1 Arm mph: Dubon 88.4, Chas 84.6, Meyers 84.1 Arm percentile: Dubon 78, Chas 45, Meyers 42* *Meyers was 60 in 2021. 2 star+ catches(90% or less chance): Meyers 18/27 66.7%, Chas 28/51 54.9%, Dubon 11/23 47.8% Reaction: Chas +0.8ft, Dubon +0.2ft, Jake -0.1ft Burst: Jake +1.8ft, Chas +1.5ft, Dubon +0.8ft Route: Jake +0.7ft, Chas +0.4ft, Dubon -0.1ft. Total Ft vs avg: Chas +2.6, Jake +2.4, Dubon +0.8 Total Ft: Meyers 37.2, Chas 36.4, Dubon 35.1
I think a big part of Meyers’ outcome will be if he can get his arm all the way back. When he came up his arm was average to above average, after he came back from injury it was below average. His power was also down, from above average to below average. If he can’t get all of his strength back on both sides of the ball, it is hard to see him as more than a fringey 4th OF, but if he is able to get all of his strength back, he can be a 3-4 win player in a good year.
I completely agree which is why I added his info. In 2021 he had 1.2 bWAR in 163 PA which is 3.7 bWAR in 500 PA. That is awfully good for the 7th or 8th best position player on a team. The more I look the more I'm convinced his struggles were simply from not being fully recovered. The problem is that sometimes those torn labrum injuries don't ever fully return to former strength/flexibility/ability. Another one of my favorites: Max exit velocity went from 78th percentile to 37th percentile. He was clearly not right. If he is back in 2023 he is a hell of a player.
FanGraphs just has an article a couple of weeks ago (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/you-cant-fake-exit-velocity/) stating 95% EV (they feel this is a better measure of power than average and max EV) is one of the toughest things to improve once in the majors. 88-89 average EV would be at league average or a smidge above league average. The Astros have a great collection of hitters. I would not expect an Astros EV on the lower end of EVs to necessarily be an accurate representation of what a normal hitter with that EV hits. I'm a little suprised by Pena's average EV. Here are the 95% EVs for 2022. Yordan Alvarez 111.65 Jose Abreu 108.7 Jeremy Pena 107.35 Kyle Tucker 106.16 Chas McCormick 105.165 Jose Altuve 105 Martin Maldonado 104.78 Michael Brantley 104.535 Alex Bregman 103.4 Mauricio Dubon 102.94
It’s interesting that Bregman is so low. Both Bregman and Dubon rarely strike out and their launch angles arent all that different. Bregman barrels the ball much better and of course walks much more. So adding 15 pounds of muscle might not really help Dubon all that much if he doesn’t improve his quality of contact and plate discipline. And it could be really bad if it affects his speed. All that said, I didn’t read the article but would be really surprised if Dubon went thru that much effort to put on weight if it wasn’t encouraged by the Astros development staff. If I had to guess I would say it was probably their idea, which would make me hopeful it will lead to him being a better player.
Ballpark 0.0 Replacement level: Maldonado 0.2, McCormick 1.3, Brantley 1.3 2.0 Average: 2.1 to 4.0 Above Average: Valdez 3.7, Javier 3.7 4.1 to 6.0 Star: Tucker 5.2, Altuve 5.1, Pena 4.8, Bregman 4.5, Abreu 4.2 6.1+ MVP consideration: Alvarez 6.8 Most of those shown as replacement were out part of the season and did nor receive PAs.
I don't doubt that the Astros are doing everything they can to help Dubon increase his EV. It is really hard to be a good player hitting the ball as weakly as he does. My guess would be that if he increases his EV significantly, he's going to be trading away contact and giving pitchers more called strikes (i.e., not swinging on pitches he can't hit hard even if they are in the zone). I do not expect it will significantly make Dubon a better hitter, but I hope it does.
My hope would be that adding strength and being more selective would lead to more of everything: more walks, more strikeouts, more XBH, higher BABIP. Increasing his walk rate to something like 9%, allowing his k rate to get up somewhere around 23% (more than double what he posted in 2022), but increasing his power numbers to something like a .160 ISO (he posted that his rookie year) and a .330 babip (he posted .328 in 2020) would put him with a slash line around .260/.340/.410 which would make him an above average hitter (similar to say Ian Happ’s 2022 numbers). If he does that while maintaining his defense he’d be a viable everyday player. Of course that would certainly be an upper level outcome, but based on his weight gain, it looks like he’s putting in the work to reach it.
My buddy that's a D1 skipper said after looking at all the data and talking to everyone there is basically nothing more important than how hard you hit the ball- everything else is secondary and not even close. So, that's obviously not conducive to low K% which I know gets some people's pantys in a twist (he hates strikeouts) but essentially he's had to embrace it. His point is that it's not only about HR's and the like- it's about where the other team has to position themselves- it's about muscling a ball through the infield. It's about a ton of stuff. Hitting is super simple and we've done the math and solved it (Simple doesn't mean easy) Swing only at pitches in the zone that you can hit hard Swing hard to hit the ball hard. Put a slight uppercut on the ball to get it in the air. That means more walks, more strike outs, more line drives and more HR's and less groundballs or selective hitting to a certain spot or field. Would it be nice if a guy could practice bat control in certain situations? Sure. But that's much less important than doing the top 3 well.
well crap. I remember last season when Click said something like “hopefully his hand issues are behind us .” Nope. Sounds like it will be a chronic issue that will have to be monitored. I mean it “flared up” in the off-season when presumably he’s not playing baseball everyday. What will happen during a full 162 game season? This is not good - hopefully the team doctors figure out how to manage it. Also - is the issue in both hands or one hand ? Either way, I imagine it impacts his bat more than his fielding .
Yordan Hand Trouble McCullers Elbow Pena on Roids Tucker mad & broke. Javier rich and mediocre. Garcia new pitching stance
Is there any kind of actual diagnosis on the hand? I feel like if random soreness is cropping up in the offseason when he isn't swinging a bat that there must be SOMETHING going on that is not being brough about by physical activity, right? Like maybe an autoimmune issue or something? It's just so bizarre to me.
