THE DOG DAYS OF SPRING TRAINING
Bishop, Dubón have caught attention for two different reasons
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. >> A 162-game season is meant to be a test of endurance, stamina and mental fortitude. Those hot August days, known as the “dog days of summer,” are infamous in the world of baseball for the challenge they present to players and teams wearing down over the course of the season.
It’s the time of year when the battle-tested veterans are required to dig deeper and when young players have the chance to prove the value of fresh legs.
If you’re familiar the dog days of summer, I have a new concept to present to you: The dog days of spring training.
Welcome to the brief, seven-to-10 day period of the year when baseball is relatively boring. The Giants are in the midst of it.
We’re too far from the beginning of camp to continue breaking down all the changes that took place in the offseason and too far removed from Opening Day to more closely examine the battle for roster spots. A lot has already happened and there’s still some drama we’ve yet to see, but the excitement of mid-February has waned and the adrenaline that comes from the start of the regular season is a little farther down the road.
Most of the top prospects who have more of an opportunity to play in games at the beginning of spring have been reassigned to minor league camp while the veterans who will be a part of the lineup on an everyday basis aren’t yet playing nine innings. That leaves a big group of non-roster invitees and players who will likely open the year at Triple-A to take down atbats and while some are having a nice spring, the quality of the games suffers a bit.
Fear not, Giants fans, because a week from now, we’ll begin looking ahead to Opening Day, projecting the
rotation and the lineup and thinking about who Gabe Kapler will use as his closer. There are a lot of good times ahead, but for now, there’s a little bit of a lull.
That’s okay. It’s the dog days of spring training.
Down on the farm
If 2019 first round draft choice Hunter Bishop has a long career with the Giants, I have an early guess he’ll become a fan favorite at Oracle Park.
Aside from the fact he grew up in the Bay Area, attended the same high school as Barry Bonds (Serra in San Mateo) and dreamed of launching home runs into McCovey Cove, it’s the tenacity with which Bishop plays that will endear him to fans.
No one swings harder, no one runs harder and no one leaves it on the field quite like Bishop, and that’s been apparent since he first appeared in a Cactus League game for the Giants last spring. After pressing a bit during a few spring training games in 2020, Bishop appears much more at ease this year.
“It’s definitely a 360 from last year,” Bishop said. “I think I had played 20 games in pro ball as of last spring training, so it wasn’t that I wasn’t ready, it’s just I had never been around guys like that, never been around these big leaguers and I had never faced pitching like that.”
Positive COVID-19 tests prevented Bishop from joining the Giants at Oracle Park for summer camp last year, but he spent the months of August and September at the Sacramento alternate site taking atbats against Triple-A and major league-caliber pitchers. The experience wasn’t a substitute for getting 500 minor league plate appearances, but it did expose him to higher level pitching that should pay off when he plays a full season in 2021.
This spring, it’s been the opportunity to work with the Giants’ major league hitting coaches that should set Bishop up for success.
During instructional league play in the fall, Bishop registered an exit velocity of 119 miles per hour, which would rank as the hardest a Giants player has hit a baseball since Statcast began tracking data in 2015. Shortstop Marco Luciano, the Giants’ top overall prospect, is the only other player in the farm system known to have hit a ball as hard.
Mauricio Dubón’s batting average was 15 points higher in the month of August than it was in September this year, but there’s no question he was a better player during the second half of last season.
Giants manager Gabe Kapler said everything about Dubón was different.
“Mauricio has been — since the middle of last season— a very engaged learner and listener and worker,” Kapler said.
What’s the most important lesson Dubón has learned?
“If I can’t hit it out, I’m not swinging,” Dubón said Monday. “That’s been helping out a lot.”
Dubón’s average may have been slightly better in August, but his on-base percentage and slugging percentage spiked in September when he made the realization that walks could be valuable part of his game.
The Giants manager called the utility man a “different” player from last spring to this spring, citing his refined approach at the plate and his capacity to put coaching points into action. That’s a potentially huge development for the team’s best defensive center fielder and a solid option behind Brandon Crawford at shortstop, because improved plate discipline will keep him in the lineup.
Dubón rarely produces elite exit velocities and ranked in the 13th percentile of all major leaguers in hard-hit percentage last season, but if he takes more walks and improves his barrel percentage, he’ll increase his value in a way that will be hard for Kapler to keep him out of the lineup.