Houston Astros center fielder Mauricio Dubón's hitting streak came to an end after 20 games on Saturday. The former SF Giants utility man built the longest hitting streak by an Astros player since Hunter Pence, another former Giant, who had a 23-game hitting streak in 2011. Dubónis hitting .302/.327/.385 with six doubles, a triple, three walks, and nine strikeouts in 101 plate appearances.
Dubón, many fans will remember, was one of the most popular players on the Giants during the Farhan Zaidi era. The first Honduran-born player to reach MLB, Dubón was traded to the Giants during Zaidi's first trade deadline with the team for a pair of relief pitchers (Drew Pomeranz and Ray Black). By the end of the 2019 season, Dubón established himself as one of the funniest players on the team, hitting .279/.312/.442 in 28 games with San Francisco.
Having grown up a Giants fan himself, obsessed with Brandon Crawford, Dubón took every opportunity to prove himself and play on the team long-term. The next year, the Giants attempted to push Dubón to be more versatile. With Crawford entrenched at shortstop, the coaching staff asked him to learn to play center field, and he was surprisingly adept in the outfield. By the end of the 2020 season, he was the Giants defacto center fielder against lefties.
Dubón hit his first sizable struggles at the plate in 2021. He hit just .240/.278/.377 in 187 plate appearances and was relegated to the minor leagues during the Giants 107-win campaign.
Perhaps most consistently, Dubón did struggle with baserunning, making several mistakes that ended Giants rallies. After a string of errors early in the 2022 season, the Giants traded him to the Astros for catcher Michael Papierski. That, of course, didn't play out for them. Papierski did not record a hit in nine plate appearances with the Giants before he was designated for assignment. Papierski is now in the Tigers organization. Dubón, on the other hand, helped the Astros win the 2022 World Series as a versatile glove-first contributor.
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