Brandon Dixon came over to the Cincinnati Reds in the Todd Frazier trade that also included Jose Peraza and Scott Schebler. Dixon was considered to be the third piece to the trade, a player with some upside but who was a bit raw at the plate.
The Reds assigned Brandon Dixon to the Double-A Pensacola Blue Wahoos to begin the season. In April things got out to a slow start for the infielder. In the first ten games of the season he hit just .233/.273/.267. Over the final nine games of the month he picked things up a little bit, but still struggled as he posted a .250/.276/.321 with a walk and 10 strikeouts. In total for April his triple-slash line was just .241/.274/.293 with three walks and 19 strikeouts in 62 plate appearances.
When the calendar flipped to May something seemed to change for Dixon. He started out the month by going 1-3 with a solo home run and never really looked back. In his 22 games for the Blue Wahoos he went out and hit .342/.400/.724 with eight doubles and seven home runs. Perhaps the most important part was that he had seven walks and 20 strikeouts, a much better ratio than he showed in April.
His incredibly May has pushed his season line to .299/.347/.537 with 10 walks and 39 strikeouts. With the 10 walks and 39 strikeouts there’s certainly some room for further improvement, but that ratio is the second best of his career, and an enormous step forward from the 98 strikeout and 12 walk performance in Double-A Tulsa in 2015 with the Dodgers organization. And, as noted above, the ratio in May was much better than the ratio he posted in April.
The improvements in the pitch selection seems to be something that Dixon is seemingly aware of and working on. Here’s what he had to say in an MiLB.com article after the game last night:
The first at-bat, I think I had like a six-pitch at-bat. I was 3-2, and finally [Mobile starter Taylor Clarke] left one over the plate that I could handle. That’s been the main thing for the last couple days, just having good pitches.
You can just kind of tell [when things are good], by how your outs are, if you’re making hard outs, drawing walks, seeing the ball well,” he said. “It’s not necessarily just based on hits or stuff like that. The entire scope of everything lets you know you’re feeling pretty good and trying to keep it rolling.
That’s good to see from Brandon Dixon, as the hitting tools have never been the question, but it was his approach and pitch recognition skills that seemed to be holding back the ability to get the most from his raw skills. His May certainly gave a taste of the kind of thing he can do when he’s seeing the ball well, taking some walks and swinging at better pitches. Hopefully that will continue moving forward into June.