Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
The roughly 10 percent of staff the Giants laid off now have a few faces attached to them, and they’re painful ones.
Among the departed from the organization after the mid-October cutdown are Dave Righetti and Shawon Dunston, according to The Athletic.
Righetti pitched three seasons with the Giants in the early 1990s, then transitioned into a beloved, longtime pitching coach, from 2000-17, spanning regimes with Dusty Baker, Felipe Alou and Bruce Bochy. Amid the Giants’ downturn, he was reassigned before the ’18 season into a front-office role; for the 2020 season, he had been listed as a special assistant in player development.
So was Dunston, who also was let go following a season that didn’t feature fans paying to enter Oracle Park. A popular and joyous personality around the clubhouse, Dunston had played for the Giants in three stints in the ’90s and early 2000s, including winning the Willie Mac Award, before 13 seasons as a coach. He had worked in video replay before entering player development in a season that featured very little player development because there were no minor leagues.
Both were popular within the organization and with the fanbase, although their jobs were less clear in the new regime.
The layoffs were due to the “unprecedented impact and continued uncertainty of the pandemic on our operations,” the team said in a statement.