{"id":508706,"date":"2026-01-06T23:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T23:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/508706\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T23:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T23:26:10","slug":"giants-designate-justin-dean-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/508706\/","title":{"rendered":"Giants Designate Justin Dean For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Giants have designated outfielder Justin Dean<\/a> for assignment, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>. That\u2019s the corresponding 40-man roster move for their signing of right-hander Tyler Mahle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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%.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t have three years of big league service time nor a previous career outright, so he wouldn\u2019t have the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Giants have designated outfielder Justin Dean for assignment, per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. That\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,39236,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-508706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-justin-dean","10":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115850745419252247","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}