Justin Dean Understands the Assignment

It was hot in Chicago on Sunday, It had been hotter on Saturday, and more oppressive on Friday, when the air was filled with down-drifting smoke, but Sunday was hot. Watch carefully on Sunday mornings at the ballpark, and you can see players allowing themselves tiny breaks. The season is grueling; surviving it means taking micro-vacations, like lingering over a breakfast plate in the team dining area an extra few minutes or attending some church gathering, be it one of the peer-led Bible studies or a miniature Catholic Mass. Two hours before first pitch, though, Justin Dean was already halfway through his demanding daily routine. 

"First thing, before I even get out here, I try to be one of the first guys through the cage, getting my flips in, my live pitching looks in," Dean said, standing and stretching on the steps leading down from the field toward the tunnel in the Cubs dugout. "That gives me time to do this, too."

The "this" of which he speaks is a progression of defensive drills with third-base coach and outfield instructor Quintin Berry. Interestingly, their work together begins with Dean donning a mini-glove—a tool more often associated with infielders. Kneeling a few feet from Dean, Berry throws him a series of short hops, which Dean fields in several different positions. Unlike an infielder, he doesn't start down on his knees himself; this work is different. Instead, he goes through a series of arrangements of his feet, each one looking like he's reaching a ground-ball single at a different moment in his stride. The mini-glove forces him to get and stay even lower than he would in a game.

"It’s so important. Getting to the ball quickly and getting rid of it, just stopping that guy from advancing, whatever I can do to be ready for that, I want to do it," he said. "So I try to do this every day. Make every kind of play that I might need to make out there. Be ready for anything."

Dean has a preferred foot on which to plant as he swoops down to collect a ball, but he knows the game doesn't always operate on your rhythm, so he and Berry practice picking the ball up directly in front of him and to each side, with each foot forward.

Relatively soon, the mini-glove is cast aside, and Dean switches to his custom-colored outfielder's mitt. Berry goes to work, then, with his fungo bat, and the drills are repeated, but with slightly greater distance between coach and pupil and slightly more pace on the balls being fielded. After going (again) through that exhaustive set of body positions and arrangements of Dean's feet, the two move farther and farther apart, until Berry is camped on the foul line about 40 feet beyond third base and Dean is out in shallow center. Now the balls are hit a greater distance from him, and the same ballet takes place with broader sweeps. Dean runs anywhere from three to 10 steps after each ball, fielding them exactly the way he did in the previous drills. He's locking in the same reliable set of movements, while making sure that the variety of those movements is great enough to prepare him for game action.

"You want to be ready for anything. Not every ball you get out there is gonna be the same," Dean said of one move repeated at each level of the progression, wherein he backhands the ball like an infielder. (Nine times in 10, outfielders, will find a way to get around balls hit to their throwing-arm side and field it with their glove in a forehand position, surrounding the ball, but that's not always possible or preferable.) "I try to move some ways here that I might not do very often in a game, but then if I need to, I’m ready."

That's Dean's credo, and the motto of any good fifth outfielder. "Be ready." It's much easier said than done, but that's why Dean works up a real sweat long before gametime—and does it every day. In all that time with Berry, he didn't make even one effortful throw; he returned the ball softly to his bare-handed coach on bounces or rolls. He'll play catch with a teammate closer to game time; this is just bonus work.

"It can make a big difference; you never know what will," Dean said. "And so my main thing has been to have a routine. One, it wakes the body up, just get moving and get out there. Especially when you know that your playing time isn’t going to be that consistent, you want to be ready. You want to make that play when you’re called upon; it can be the difference."

Dean said that, although he's always tried to get in extra work on occasion, he learned just how important a routine and a daily plan for improvement and preparedness were when he got a taste of life in the big leagues with the Dodgers last year. Then-teammate Mookie Betts talked him through it; Dean called Betts "my guy" and said the two still connect when needed.

A 17th-round pick in 2018, Dean is a late bloomer. He's already, technically, a World Series champion, having been with the 2025 Dodgers, and he appeared in 13 games for Los Angeles in October last year. He didn't come to bat even once in those contests, though, and in what adds up to about four months of time on big-league rosters, he has only 42 games played and a hilariously low 10 career plate appearances. That's playing time being inconsistent, alright. It's a testament to Dean's dedication and his popularity in a clubhouse that both the Dodgers and the Cubs have been willing to carry him for so long while using him so little. He stays ready, even if it's only for a few innings' defensive work in blowouts. He knows that, one way or another, there's always a chance that he's called upon to play defense in a much higher-pressure, higher-leverage situation.

He also keeps himself sharp as a hitter, leaning on the game's improved technological infrastructure. Dean said he got some reps in on the Trajekt machine while with the Dodgers last summer and fall, but has developed even more of a routine with it since coming to the Cubs. Unlike Los Angeles, Chicago has a machine at their Triple-A affiliate, as well as one at Wrigley Field; Dean built a pregame plan for utilizing that tool, too.

"It can definitely help, just visually," Dean said of the machine, which uses video and data inputs to mimic the real experience of facing hurlers in a cage setting. "It doesn’t have to be about facing a specific pitcher or anything, but to feel like you’re getting more real reps that way."

On the rare occasions when he's gotten to swing for the Cubs, that work, too, has paid off; he has his first two career hits this year. His role is a paltry thing, on a team loaded with outfield talent and three guys who (each for slightly different reasons) hate to come out of the lineup for any reason. Dean doesn't mind, and said that Craig Counsell doesn't need to coddle him by communicating constantly about what to expect.

"I think it goes without saying, in a way," Dean said. "That’s what the job is. I can’t predict when the chance is going to come, but the work gets me ready to, when they need me, I want to make whatever play we need that day."

Most days, the Cubs don't need any play from Dean. That hasn't diminished his passion for the preparation. Listening to and watching Betts, going along for the ride with that championship team as a 28-year-old rookie, and working under managers Dave Roberts and Counsell, Dean has soaked up a lot of experience in his short time in the majors, after spending the better part of a decade riding buses in the minors. He's making the most of his chance to stay in the bigs now, even if 'the most' of a role like this still isn't much.

The metaphor of those reps where he's stationary and has to field the ball cleanly with each foot in each possible position is an apt one. The game can't wrong-foot you if you have no wrong foot. That's why Dean puts in the work, and the respect his teammates have for him is because he puts in the work.