It was Mauricio Dubón who declared that this was the Mauricio Dubón Revenge Series. After going 3-5 in Game 1, he freely and confidently told the media that he’d had this series circled on the calendar since the schedule came out, and that "I was not treated the right way over there," and “The thing I liked is just watching the guys behind me. They know how (much) it meant to me to beat those guys,” and, when presented with the possibility that the Giants would like to have a player like him this year, "Thank God they don't. Thank God they don't.”
That’s not ambiguous. Mauricio Dubón wanted to beat the Giants, specifically, because he didn’t like how he was treated in San Francisco, and he viewed the now-concluded Giants-Astros series as the best way to show the Giants how wrong and shitty they are. After his game-tying fifth inning hit in the first game of the series, Astros beat writer Chandler Rome tweeted that “Mauricio Dubón is hyped and it looked like he stared right into the Giants dugout.”
Dubón sent a message in the first game with his three-hit performance, which included not only that game-tying hit, but also the hit that gave the Astros the lead in the 7th. Like Ross Stripling put it after that game, “Almost beat us himself, right?” It was impressive. It was a statement. The words that he said after the game were also a statement.
Dubón going 1-for-8 over the next two games was also also a statement.
Because it’s not like the Giants were wrong.
When the Giants traded Dubón for Michael Papierski in early 2022, Dubón was hitting .239/.245/.391, which is extremely bad. Small sample size, though, right? That was just 49 plate appearances, which is practically nothing. He got 216 PAs with the Astros last year, and those should tell us a little more about what kind of player he is.
In those 216 PAs, Dubón hit .208/.254/.294, which was considerably worse than his already terrible line with the Giants. Of the 358 major league hitters who had at least 200 plate appearances last year, Dubón had the 11th worst wOBA. And if you remember anything about Mauricio Dubón’s tenure with the Giants, you’ll know that he certainly did not make up for that poor showing with heads-up baserunning and strong defense.
So when it came time to choose between Dubón and Thairo Estrada last year, both of whom were out of options when a Tommy La Stella-related roster crunch hit, the team went with Estrada. Now, it turns out the actual correct answer was to avoid the roster crunch and not bring La Stella back, but it’s not like Dubón was some world-beater for whom the team should have pulled out all the stops. He was bad last year. He was bad in 2021. He was okay in 2020 and 2019, but the league had figured out what to do with him, he hadn’t adjusted back, and he was out of options.
In other words, Dubón wasn’t performing and the team had to make a decision, so they shipped him out. It’s not what you want to do with a young player, but he wasn’t a major league-caliber hitter in San Francisco. He wasn’t one in Houston last year either, but they had space on the roster to keep him around, and he got himself a ring for it, then managed to improve enough in 2023 to be an almost league-average hitter.
And it’s in the context of all this that Dubón is mad at Gabe Kapler for not playing him enough and at Farhan Zaidi for the way he constructs the roster. And just to be clear, they are the ones he is mad at — he texted some of his former teammates on Tuesday just to tell them he wasn’t talking about them in his postgame comments, which really narrows down the list of potential targets.
Andrew Baggarly said that Dubón had never made a secret of his antipathy for the Giants’ roster building philosophy, and he was a square peg that they couldn’t fit in their round holes of Guys Who Walk A Lot And Have Power. Even now, after Dubón had a 20-game hitting streak end within the last week, he’s still only at a wRC+ of 98. He’s still a slightly below average hitter, even with a high batting average, because he never walks and doesn’t have much power. He would be a nice player for the Giants to have, especially considering the poor performances of all non-Thairo middle infielders, but it’s not like the guy is a world-beater.
To be fair to Dubón, if you are a player, the team must be run in an incredibly annoying way. To see guys come up for two days, not get a real chance, then get sent down for another replaceable 26th man must be exhausting. There are advantages to this way of doing things, of course, but a big disadvantage is that the clubhouse absolutely feels that they’re being run like a fantasy team. You don’t perform your best when you think your boss sees you as just a faceless cog, and that is the case for a good chunk of the Giants roster. Dubón has a legitimate beef with this, I think.
And yet, he was simply never good enough to complain about his playing time. If you want to play more, then play better. It’s a simple equation: good players get to play more. With the Giants, Dubón wasn’t a good player, so he didn’t get to play a lot. He blames the team for that, which, okay, but he had a part in it too. His performance dictated his playing time, which is why he didn’t start a lot.
In the end, this was probably all a big hubbub over very little. Dubón played an excellent game, talked some shit, and then disappeared for the next two. He had those moments that made you think, damn, he’s got it, this guy is special, and then he did practically nothing.
That’s the Mauricio Dubón story. He shows skills, convinces you that he could be a special player, puts on a show, and just gives off flashes of finally locking in. Then he’s bad for longer. But damn, those flashes are impressive.
"That’s the Mauricio Dubón story."
Precisely, Watson.