Red Sox acquire Thornburg for Shaw, Dubon, Pennington

Mauricio Dubon, SS, Milwaukee Brewers (Double-A Biloxi)
Part of the return for the Brewers in the Tyler Thornburg deal this offseason, Dubon has taken a step back this season. He has quick hands and feet, a plus arm and a feel for the game that all translate to game-changing ability, but his approach often keeps those skills from playing up in games. Defensively, he can be a bit lazy with his footwork at times, so he is forced to rely on his plus arm and quick hands to bail him out. It doesn’t always work and he has made nine errors at short this season. This has led to Biloxi beginning to use him more at second base of late.

As a hitter, Dubon has an inconsistent leg lift and a mild load. He also drifts into his front foot and often finds himself off-balance, especially against off-speed pitches. He can look bad on pitches with spin but his plus bat control allows him to make contact regardless, albeit weak contact. The drift and inconsistency in his leg lift don’t allow him to get to most pitches with any authority. Two of the balls he did hit hard were to right field and came on upper-80s fastballs.

His plus speed turns that weak contact into base hits often enough that he appears productive just looking at raw numbers. I saw him in 19 at-bats over four games. He had eight hits, but hit the ball hard just three times. He had three infield hits, one slowly hit ground ball that found a hole and one fly ball that dropped in short right field. Once he is on base, he can take over the game. He currently leads the Southern League in steals with 18 and one sequence I saw showed him at his best. After the looping base hit to RF, he went to second on a ground out, then executed a perfect delayed steal to get to third and scored the winning run on a passed ball.

Dubon’s ceiling is still that of an average starter in the middle infield, but he is several adjustments away from reaching that and the more likely outcome seems to be somewhere on the utility player spectrum. —Scott Delp