Giants acquire AJ Pollock, Mark Mathias from Mariners

The Giants have acquired AJ Pollock and utility man Mark Mathias from the Mariners, as first reported by Jeff Passan of ESPN. Per MLB.com’s Dean Kramer, the Mariners will receive a player to be named later in return. The Giants have since announced the move, clearing space on the 40-man roster by transferring right-hander John Brebbia to the 60-day injured list. The club already had one spot on the 40-man available, so their roster is now at capacity.

Mathias, who the Mariners acquired off waivers from the Pirates earlier this month, departs the Mariners organization without joining the big league roster and was optioned to Triple-A by the Giants upon the deal being made official. The 28-year-old offers experience all around the diamond, though he has primarily played second and third base throughout his career. Initially drafted by Cleveland in the third round of the 2015 draft, Mathias has bounced around the league since making his big league debut with Milwaukee in 2020, with stints in Pittsburgh and Texas over the past calendar year.

In 68 career games at the big league level, Mathias’s .249/.323/.402 slash line is good for a slightly above-average wRC+ of 104, though that overall line is primarily carried by an excellent 24-game stretch with the Rangers where he slashed a whopping .277/.365/.554 in 74 trips to the plate. While the journeyman has yet to stick in the big leagues for a significant period of time, that hot stretch in Texas and a career slash line of .289/.383/.458 at the Triple-A level both indicate Mathias has the potential to be a useful big-league utility piece.

The veteran Pollock, 35, has struggled considerably to this point in the season, slashing a brutal .173/.225/.323 in 138 plate appearances, but will provide the Giants with outfield depth as they look to weather injuries to Mitch Haniger and Mike Yastrzemski, the latter of whom exited last night’s game with hamstring tightness and was placed on the 10-day IL following Pollock’s acquisition.

Going forward, Pollock should provide the club with much-needed outfield depth behind Michael Conforto, Luis Matos, and Austin Slater, at least while Yastrzemski gets healthy. Meanwhile, the Giants will surely hope better days are ahead for Pollock, who was a productive big league hitter as recently as the 2021 season as a member of the Dodgers.

San Francisco had been known to be looking for additional position player depth and added just that as the Mariners continue the sell-off they began earlier today by dealing closer Paul Sewald to Arizona. The player to be named headed back to Seattle figures to be a relatively minor piece, though it’s worth noting that the Mariners will save some of Pollock’s $7M salary for the 2023 campaign in the deal.