The Giants announced they’ve designated corner bat Matt Beaty for assignment. The move opens a spot on the 40-man roster for reliever Luke Jackson, who is back from the 60-day injured list. San Francisco had already optioned infielder David Villar to create space on the active roster.
Beaty has spent the bulk of his time in the organization with Triple-A Sacramento. Acquired from the Royals on Opening Day, he has appeared with San Francisco just four times. He singled while striking out twice in five at-bats. Beaty has hit well for the River Cats, compiling a .272/.406/.447 batting line over 129 trips to the plate. He’s walking at a quality 10.9% clip and has kept his strikeouts to a lower than average 18.6% rate.
Unfortunately for Beaty, that wasn’t enough to get him a longer look at Oracle Park. He’s appeared in just 24 MLB games dating back to the start of the 2022 season. The left-handed hitter showed some upside in prior looks with the Dodgers, including a .270/.363/.402 slash over 234 plate appearances during the ’21 campaign. He’s a career .249/.319/.405 hitter at the major league level and owns a .286/.388/.415 line through parts of five Triple-A campaigns.
Beaty clearly has offensive ability, but he’s struggled to carve out a consistent defensive role. He’s played all four corner positions at the major league level, the bulk of that time coming at first base and in left field. Those are the only two positions at which he’s started a game this year in Triple-A.
The Giants will have a week to explore trades or try to run Beaty through waivers. He has between three and four years of service time and is in his final option year, which could draw some attention from other clubs. Were he to go unclaimed on waivers, he’d have the right to test minor league free agency by virtue of both his MLB service time and a previous career outright.
Matt Beaty was always a fun player to watch and had some great pinch hit AB moments. Too bad he didn’t crack the roster
It’s pretty hard to do all of those things at once, so at least he has that going for him.
Good choice, there was never a need to add Beatty to the 40 man to begin with.
If he goes to Rockies he will be 4/5 NL west teams!
To the Dodgers for Trayce Thompson and a bucket of balls.
I’ll take that deal all day long. Thompson has three hits in the month of May, so he’s clearly been saving them up for his next team.
He’s been saving them up for something. Retirement, maybe.
Beaty wasn’t nicknamed, “the hitman” for no reason. He needs a chance to play full time.
His career OPS+ of 92 says you’re wrong. He’s a below average hitter. AAAA guy and always will be.
I think he’s a perfect 25th/26th man on the roster. Near league average and can reasonably (even if not great) play anywhere not up the middle. Plus he has shown flashes of being above average. Seems to be better than plenty of other bench options teams are rostering right now.
Wow so terrible to see such quality talent go
Beaty was indeed fun, got a good Beaty and you can dance to it.