SF Giants axe short-lived outfielder to make room for Tyler Mahle

The SF Giants made an underwhelming addition to their pitching staff official on Tuesday, announcing the signing of oft-injured rental Tyler Mahle. They already had a full 40-man at the time of the announcement, so someone had to be jettisoned off the roster to make room for him. The unfortunate soul on the chopping block was Forever Giant, Justin Dean.

Mourning the loss of Justin Dean – Forever Giant

Dean was claimed off waivers by the Giants mere days after earning a championship ring with the Dodgers in November. A glove-first outfielder, he didn’t receive any postseason plate appearances with the world champions but made several appearances as a defensive replacement, including a very memorable play in Game 6 of the World Series that may have saved the Dodgers’ World Series run.

In his two months with the Giants organization, Dean will undoubtedly go down as one of the additions in team history. The records he made in San Francisco can never be broken – he never struck out a single time, had a perfect fielding percentage, played in every single game his team played, and had an OBP of 1.000 in his zero plate appearances. Legend.

A stated goal of the Giants’ front office was to improve their outfield defense over the season, and they made two minor moves to achieve that goal – Dean, and former top prospect Joey Wiemer. Ironically, both were designated for assignment after the signings of Mahle and Jason Foley, respectively. Outside of also losing Marco Luciano and Wade Meckler, the organization now has the exact same outfield situation that they did last season, when they boasted one of the worst outfield defenses in the sport.

The only new face on the position player front still with the team is Rule 5 catcher Daniel Susac, who could be a fine complement to Patrick Bailey but isn’t exactly going to sell any season ticket packages. The Giants have been more active on the pitching side, at least in terms of quantity if not quality. They’ve signed two back-of-the-rotation arms in Mahle and Adrian Houser, injured former closer Jason Foley, and taken fliers on other names like Sam Hentges, Nick Margevicius, Gregory Santos, and Reiver Sanmartin. You may have even heard of a couple of them!

The offseason is now more than halfway over, and hopefully Buster Posey and Zack Minasian have put in good work refining their golf games, but it’s impossible to make the argument that the Giants’ outlook has improved in any notable fashion. Thankfully, there are at least a few teams out there who have had worse offseasons. The New York Mets have taken multiple PR black eyes and watched three of their biggest contributors walk out the door, the Yankees have had one of the quietest offseasons around, and the Rockies are – well, you know. That doesn’t excuse the Giants’ shortcomings, of course, but should offer a tiny amount of solace.

There are still notable names out there who could help the Giants win a few more ballgames and sell a few more tickets this year. If Bo Bichette and Cody Bellinger continue to languish on the market much longer, it’s not out of the question that their prices could fall just low enough for the Giants to snap one of them up. They appear to be comfortable with their rotation at this point and act willing to give Ryan Walker another chance at closing games, so improvements to the lineup and defense are all we can hope for.

The Giants are still slightly over $30 million under the first tier of the luxury tax, so that could give them room to sign one of them and make a trade or two to fill out the rest of the roster. Of course, they may want to earmark most of that cash towards augmenting their impressive real estate portfolio. That’s what we as baseball fans should truly be rooting for.