Meet a Prospect: Taylor Dugas

Taylor Dugas was called up from Double-A with the Trenton Thunder this week to give the Yankees an extra outfielder and bench player for the weekend. Carlos Beltran was removed from Tuesday night’s game with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim with a rib cage injury that seems minor enough to avoid a DL stint or surgery meaning that Dugas isn’t likely to stay up for long unfortunately. The Yankees could have called up Tyler Austin who is already on the 40 man roster but didn’t for some reason and could not call up Ramon Flores since it hasn’t been 10 days since he was demoted and since Beltran will avoid the DL, at least for now, so Dugas gets the shot. Let’s hope that Dugas makes the most out of this opportunity so let’s meet him, Meet a Prospect: Taylor Dugas.

Taylor Brooks Dugas was born on December 15, 1989 in Lafayette, Louisiana. Dugas grew up a Yankees fan with brother Tyler Dugas and sister Tiffany Dugas. The Yankee fandom can be explained by the fact that the Dugas family was family friends with a former Yankees star Ron Guidry and Taylor saw much of Louisiana Lightning, a fellow Lafayette native by the way, growing up as a kid. Dugas began playing youth baseball at five years old and joined many travel teams that visited the state of Florida and Texas and continued his amateur career when he attended Teurlings Catholic High School in Lafayette. Dugas played for the baseball team there and posted a .640 batting average with 10 home runs in his senior season. Dugas ended his tenure at the Catholic School with a career .519 batting average and although he did not do enough to get drafted in the 2008 MLB First Year Players Draft he did enough to catch the attention of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Alabama was not the first choice for Dugas, LSU was naturally, but was only given a chance as a walk-on player for Louisiana State University while the University of Alabama offered him a scholarship to play baseball. Dugas went on to hit .352 as a freshman with the Crimson Tide while he improved on that in his sophomore season hitting .395 to lead the SEC Conference. After that breakout season Dugas was invited to try out for the United States national collegiate baseball team. All this attention Dugas was garnering was enough to get him drafted in the eighth round by the Chicago Cubs after his junior year, 249^th overall. The Cubs offered Dugas $300,000 to sign but instead the outfielder decided to play his senior season at Alabama and turn down the Cubs offer.  As a senior Dugas hit .343 and set the Crimson Tide records for hits 334, singles with 235, doubles with 67 and triples with 18.

After setting multiple school records he impressed the New York Yankees enough to draft him in the 8^th round, this time 277^th overall, in the 2012 MLB Draft. Dugas almost immediately signed with New York and began his professional career with the Staten Island Yankees where he hit .306 and was named to the New York-Penn League All-Star Game. Dugas was promoted to the Low-A Charleston Riverdogs in 2013 before earning another promotion to the High-A Tampa Yankees before the season ended where combined for a .285 batting average and 64 walks. Dugas began the 2014 season with the Trenton Thunder before earning a call up to Triple-A and the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders in June of that season where he was until the Yankees called him up this week.

Dugas is another left handed outfielder with a ton of speed and defense that lacks in the home run department that fits the mold of Mason Williams, Slade Heathcott and Ramon Flores. Williams and Heathcott are injured and Flores could not be called up as we said so now it’s time for Dugas to take a crack at it. The good news for the Yankees is if the whole outfielder thing doesn’t work out they can always rest the arm of Garrett Jones and let Dugas pitch like he did three times last season going 0-2 in 3.0 IP with a strikeout and two walks. Hopefully it doesn’t come down to that but if it does then at least the Yankees are prepared as Dugas is prepared for anything. Welcome to the show Taylor, make us proud!