WELL TRAVELED
Pitcher Shawn Dubin took an unusual route to spring training.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Ball four sailed in, and Shawn Dubin hung his head.
Tres Barrera walked to first base. Brent Strom left the Astros’ dugout. Carlos Correa sauntered to the mound from shortstop. Correa covered his mouth and muttered something to Dubin, a promising pitcher feeling the most pressure of his professional life.
Dubin once pitched with far too much emotion. Team success determined his effectiveness. If one or two things went awry, so did Dubin’s outing.
On Monday against the Nationals, he loaded the bases with one out in his first stint in a major league spring training game. Strom, one of baseball’s most revered pitching coaches, and Correa, a former first overall pick, encircled Dubin, a slender righthander with a remarkable tale.
Dubin wants to belong. He left baseball and came back, only to then see the sport stolen from his life.
His journey to major league spring training is something remarkable: a combination of seized last chances and constant change. He did not pitch until the summer before he entered college. Once he did, Dubin attended four schools.
Twice, he almost gave up baseball. Once, a school did it for him. Somehow, Shawn Dubin is here.
“I kind of felt somewhat out of place in a sense,” Dubin said of his early professional experiences. “But I just had it in the back of my head that ‘you didn’t go through all this just to stop now.’ ”
The meeting on the mound lasted more than a minute. Dubin centered himself and concentrated on Washington leadoff hitter Andrew Stevenson.
Dubin stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 171 pounds — 30 more, he says, than when the Astros drafted him in 2018. Coaches have revamped his delivery to something more repeatable: a short, compact motion that allows Dubin to hide the baseball well. More consistent repetition allows for better command.
Dubin got to a two-strike count against Stevenson. He dotted a 94 mph fastball at the top outer half of the strike zone. Stevenson swung through it, and Dubin left the mound. He did not record three outs but did avoid a disaster.
One spring training inning does not portend greatness, and Dubin’s position in the Astros’ hierarchy did not change as a result. But the club clearly sees his potential.
Last season, the Astros included Dubin on their 12-man postseason taxi squad. Nothing better illustrates the organization’s affinity for this former 13th-round pick who got a $1,000 signing bonus.
The 25-year-old righthander is eligible for Rule 5 selection this offseason. The Astros can prevent it by placing him on their 40-man roster.
“The Astros took a chance on this kid that’s super raw and talented and electric,” said Randy Guite, one of Dubin’s college coaches. “It was just a matter of him getting that (chance). Once he got that, I was like, man, they snuck a good one. It was just a matter of if he ever got a chance.”
‘You’re a pitcher’
These chances don’t normally come to kids from Allegany, a town of 8,000 people on New York’s southern border. Dubin is a “rock star” there. He returned this winter for a pitching clinic, and the town’s indoor athletic facility overflowed.
“He’s just real easy to root for,” said Mike Matz, a local high school coach. “Up here, a guy like that, everyone knows who he is. We’re a small area. We don’t get big league prospects coming out of here all that often. He doesn’t just have his hometown rooting for him. He’s got the whole area rooting for him.”
At 10 years old, Dubin started attending baseball camps at nearby St. Bonaventure, even while another sport captured most of his attention.
At Allegany-Limestone High School, Dubin starred as a shortstop and a soccer midfielder. Initially, he intended to play both soccer and baseball at Jamestown Community College.
Before he left, Dubin attended St. Bonaventure’s baseball camp one final time. On the final day, some coaches raised radar guns. Persistent nudging began.
“Get on the mound,” Matz told him. “Just do it. See what happens.”
Matz is the head baseball coach at Portville High School, an archrival of Allegany-Limestone, but he developed a rapport with the shortstop in the opposing dugout.
Dubin wanted to play every day. He hit atop his high school batting order while pitching infrequently. Maybe 10 total innings as a high schooler, he estimated.
But Matz wasn’t sure he had a future as an infielder.
“He’d probably have to hit it twice to hit a home run,” Matz said. “He just didn’t have the pop for it.”
After Matz’s Portville club defeated Allegany-Limestone to end Dubin’s senior season, the two continued their friendship.
Matz continued to clamor for Dubin to pitch. On this day at camp, he relented. Matz raised the radar gun. Dubin fired a fastball without any actual pitching mechanics. It was 87 mph.
“And I’m like, ‘Geez,’ ” Matz said. “I told him, ‘Dude, you’re a pitcher.’ ”
Dubin walked off the mound and toward Matz. He asked how to grip a slider. Matz showed him. Dubin returned to the rubber and spun one. Matz called it “explosive.”
“Dude,” the coach told him, “you’ve got something here. You have to keep going.”
‘You need to get him here’
Dubin left for Jamestown Community College. He did not make it to baseball season.
After his first fall semester, Dubin left school for a job as a contractor for Lowe’s. He built decks and helped install kitchens and bathrooms.
Dubin wanted to go back to school, but only at a four-year institution. He acknowledged it probably meant the end of his baseball career, despite his sterling reputation around the area.
“He would throw one game against us because we were rival schools,” said Evan Ryan, who played at Olean High School before enrolling at Erie Community College. “He was a shortstop, and he didn’t really throw that much, but he was really lengthy, whippy. Good arm-side run on his fastball. His slider was a good pitch. As a hitter, at least facing him, I’ll always remember that. I never hit well against him.”
Ryan and Dubin became friends between their senior year of high school and freshman year in college. Erie appeared on track for a good 2015 season, if only it could find one more starting pitcher. Ryan thought of one person.
“I thought we could potentially be really good if he came to play for us and play with me,” Ryan said. “I kind of tried talking him into it.”
Dubin said he agreed “on a limb.” The team did not guarantee him a spot before his arrival on a fall Saturday morning to throw a bullpen session.
Ryan set low expectations, telling his coaches Dubin could “maybe” throw 85 mph. He practiced while Dubin threw. Soon, the head coach approached Ryan.
“Yeah, you need to get him here,” he said.
“I tried talking him into it,” Ryan said. “It ended up working out.”
Had the coaches been unimpressed and not offered him a spot, Dubin said he would “probably not” have resumed playing baseball. A year later, he earned a spot at Division I University of Buffalo.
“I think about it all the time, actually, how crazy one decision has impacted my life so far,” Dubin said.
Dubin’s numbers in two seasons at Buffalo bordered on brutal. He posted a 5.50 ERA in 1291⁄3 innings. He walked 5.3 batters per nine innings and had a 1.716 WHIP. But scouts and coaches told him there was a decent chance he’d be drafted in 2017.
Dubin reacted as most would. He stopped attending class. His grade-point average plummeted.
Soon, Dubin assumed, none of it would be necessary. Only his junior season stood in the way.
On April 3, the team finished a three-game series at Kent State. During the bus ride home, a text message appeared on every player’s phone. There was a meeting to deliver an “important announcement” on campus. The baseball team walked in. So did the soccer, swimming and diving and rowing teams.
“They just said, ‘We’re going to be cutting your programs. You can finish out this year, but as far as next year, you guys are going to have to go somewhere else if you’re going to continue to play,’ ” Dubin said.
Dubin had unsalvageable grades and a faint hope he could get drafted. That June, after 40 rounds, he went unselected.
“I felt pain for the kid,” Matz said. “You’re watching these rounds go; I’m watching the draft tracker right along. Every pick is coming, and his name is not there. Every time.”
‘It worked out’
Dubin considered quitting. Spots at Division I schools weren’t available. Contracting work still appealed to him. Recruiters still tried to sway him, including one who narrowly avoided the disaster at Buffalo.
Guite left Buffalo before the 2017 season for a job at Georgetown College, a private liberal arts school of 1,517 students in southeast Kentucky. The team plays NAIA level athletics. Guite had a rapport with Dubin and delivered his pitch.
“I told him I’d do everything possible to get him in front of the right people,” Guite said. “Obviously, it worked out.”
Dubin struck out 128 and walked 18 in 942⁄3 frames at Georgetown, and Guite sold the righthander to scouts.
Four or five scouts showed up for each Friday night start, affectionately dubbed around the town as a “Dubin Day.” He averaged 8991 mph upon his arrival. In the team’s conference championship game, as Astros scouts watched, Dubin touched 95 mph.
“He knew this was his last shot,” Guite said. “He put the time and the effort in to really focus on learning how to use that raw talent he had and turn it into something more controlled.
“You watch him pitch, and you’re like, ‘Shoot, how is that coming out of that?’ ”
When the Astros chose Dubin, 150 pounds would have been a generous listing of his weight. He has packed 30 more onto his thin frame by eating “as many calories as possible.” His flowing hair has been trimmed in favor of a closer crop. He remains unassuming to the naked eye, but one look at his arsenal reminds why teams are intrigued.
Dubin has experienced another velocity jump in the Astros system. He routinely sat at 94-96 mph in his first Grapefruit League start Monday, according to the radar gun at the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches.
The slider Matz taught him is his out pitch. While with the playoff taxi squad last year, Dubin developed a cutter that Astros analysts love.
A backfoot curveball to lefthanded hitters “saved him” during a dominant season with Class A Advanced Fayetteville in 2019. Dubin struck out 132 batters in 982⁄3 innings with the Woodpeckers, jumping onto the team’s radar.
Pitching coordinator Bill Murphy and former Astros pitching instructor Drew French helped Dubin revamp his delivery, removing his whippy, long stride for more compact, efficient movements.
Dubin called his first invitation to major league spring training “surreal.” It leaves him with one goal for the season.
“Cracking the bigs,” he said.
It’s a place he once thought so far off. Now he is so close to belonging.
“It’s been a hell of a journey,” Dubin said, “and that even makes it more special.”