The Giants have designated outfielder Justin Dean for assignment, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. That’s the corresponding 40-man roster move for their signing of right-hander Tyler Mahle.
Dean, 29, has never played for the Giants. He was only just claimed off waivers from the Dodgers in early November, shortly after he won the World Series with Los Angeles. The Dodgers mostly used him as a pinch runner and defensive replacement. He played in 18 games last year, making his major league debut, but only made two plate appearances. He then appeared in 13 postseason games without a plate appearance.
In the minors, Dean has been good for double-digit steals in each season of his career going back to 2018, with the exception of the canceled 2020 season. However, he’s never reached double digits in the home run department. He has 2,038 minor league plate appearances from 2021 to 2025 with a solid 12.1% walk rate but a high strikeout rate of 28.6%.
There was some recent improvement in terms of the punchouts, as he only struck out in 23.6% of his minor league plate appearances in 2025, a noticeable improvement compared to prior years. That helped him slash .289/.378/.431 for a 110 wRC+ in Triple-A last year while stealing 27 bases in just 90 games.
It’s the profile of a decent bench outfielder, as a floor. The Giants were intrigued enough to grab him off the wire a couple of months ago but he’s now been squeezed off their roster. Perhaps they are hoping he can be passed through waivers this time around, which would allow them to keep him as non-roster depth. He doesn’t have three years of big league service time nor a previous career outright, so he wouldn’t have the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency.
He does have a full slate of options, so perhaps he will appeal to other organizations looking for a depth piece of the speed-and-defense variety. He’ll be in DFA limbo for a week at most. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Giants could take five days to field trade interest.
Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images
Forever giant… Hardly knew ya!
ew, former smurf!
former CHAMPION smurf.
Granted: he’s a champion at being a smurf. Still a smurf. So he hadda be chopped!
Don’t touch the ball!
Sometimes the greatest play is the one that you don’t make.
He was my favorite Giant.
Bivouac
Why not Oral Hersheiser?
And Juan Marichal was my favorite Dodger.
Dean didn’t last long – not even long enough to go to Spring Training
Dean will always be known for holding hands up in World Series to get umpires to rule ball was lodged & resulting in Ground Rule 2B
Dodger legend.
Not a single career regular season hit and a World Series roster champion.
Would have guessed Brubaker, but also wondered why they even picked up Dean at the time. Later kid !
The only two guys the Giants brought in to improve their outfield defense, Wiemer and Dean, are now gone. Cool. Great offseason Giants, at least you got a new theatre!
First showing at the Curran, a triple feature of the ‘10, ‘12, & ‘14 seasons WS runs.
GIlbert improves the OF defense
Sure, but he was a midseason move, not from this offseason. Plus even if he doesn’t start the season in Sacramento he’s a platoon bat
According to Baseball Reference, he had negative defensive stats in RF and CF (only played three innings in LF).
Mr. Lodged Ball
Terrance Gore 2.0
I’m confused by Dean. I hadn’t seen him play until the infamous “hands up” in the World Series, and his 2 AB in 18 games in fact does scream Terrance Gore 2.0, except… he had just 1 SB. So was he purely a late inning defensive replacement?
That does appear to be the case he pinch ran in two of his appearances and was a defensive replacement only in the other eleven.
I think Matos will be on the opening day roster as a backup outfielder.
Cleveland will make this their big off-season signing.
“Just throw your hands in the air, and wave em like you just doesn’t care. And if the umpire asks if the ball is stuck just point at it and say oh yeah, oh yeah…”
Justin Dean Justin time