Athletics reportedly designating Geoff Hartlieb for assignment after Blewett deal

What happened

The Athletics are expected to designate right-hander Geoff Hartlieb for assignment, per MLB Trade Rumors, with the move already listed on the transaction log at MLB.com ahead of any formal club announcement. The reported DFA is tied directly to the A's cash swap with the Cardinals for right-hander Scott Blewett — a transaction that required the club to create a vacancy on its 40-man roster. Per the report, the Hartlieb designation is what presumably opens that spot for Blewett's addition.

Why it matters

The mechanics here are straightforward enough: a 40-man roster has a fixed ceiling, and bringing in a player from outside the organization means someone already on it has to move. Under general league rules, a player designated for assignment must be traded, released, or placed on outright waivers within seven days, after which a 48-hour waiver clock runs before any outright assignment to the minors can be completed.

For Hartlieb, the path forward is genuinely uncertain. He has not established the kind of major-league track record that typically generates waiver claims, but he has been a durable presence in the upper minors — which means an outright assignment or a release leading to a minor-league deal elsewhere are both plausible outcomes. The desk will not speculate on which, because the available material does not.

What the move does clarify is the A's current posture: with a 64-98 record and both the division race and Wild Card race behind them, this is a roster being shaped around evaluation and organizational depth rather than October positioning. A cash deal for a bullpen arm, accompanied by a DFA of a veteran reliever, fits that frame precisely.

The numbers

Hartlieb's 2026 season line with the A's tells a compact and difficult story. Per MLB Trade Rumors, he pitched 13 1/3 innings, allowed nine runs for a 6.08 ERA, surrendered 17 hits, walked nine batters, struck out six, and was charged with four wild pitches. Walking more hitters than you strike out is the kind of ratio that tends to accelerate roster decisions, and the four wild pitches add a layer of command concern that goes beyond the ERA alone.

Zoom out and the career picture is similarly challenging. Per the report, Hartlieb has now pitched in parts of seven major-league seasons, accumulating 96 total innings and a 7.69 earned run average across that span. Those are not the numbers of a pitcher who has found a foothold at the highest level.

The Triple-A résumé reads differently. Per MLB Trade Rumors, the former 29th-round pick has spent parts of seven seasons at that level, logging 316 innings with a 4.22 ERA and a 25.8% strikeout rate — a profile that has kept him employed and relevant in the upper minors even when the big-league results have not followed. That gap between Triple-A viability and major-league execution is one of the more common and quietly poignant stories in professional baseball, and Hartlieb's career is a fairly clean illustration of it.

Where the club stands

The Athletics enter this week at 64-98 (.395), sitting fourth in the AL West, 17 games back in the division, and ranked 11th in the Wild Card picture at 20.0 relative to the cut line. They are eliminated from both the division race and the Wild Card race.

The upcoming schedule brings the Boston Red Sox to Sutter Health Park for three games. Monday features Jack Perkins against Payton Tolle, Tuesday lines up Gage Jump against Jake Bennett, and Wednesday closes the series with Jacob Lopez against Patrick Sandoval. A home series against a contending club, with a rotation of arms that includes several names still establishing themselves at the major-league level, is exactly the kind of late-July stretch that doubles as an extended audition.

What we don't know yet

The formal club announcement had not been made at the time of the MLB Trade Rumors report, so the move remains reported rather than officially announced. Beyond the paperwork, the next chapter of Hartlieb's career — whether that means a waiver claim, a release, or an outright assignment — has not been reported. Similarly, the terms of the Blewett deal beyond "cash swap" and the Cardinals as the trading partner have not been detailed in the available material.

What to watch

The seven-day DFA clock is the immediate operational item. If Hartlieb clears waivers, the A's would have the option to outright him to the minors; if he is claimed, he moves on. Either way, the resolution of that process will say something about how the rest of the league weighs his Triple-A track record against the major-league results.

On the other side of the transaction, Blewett's reported addition to the 40-man roster is the move the A's are reportedly making room for — and how he is deployed over the remainder of a lost season will be worth monitoring for anyone tracking the club's bullpen construction heading into the offseason.

The broader picture is a club that is, by the numbers, deep into a rebuilding cycle and using the final months of a 64-98 season to sort through organizational options. A DFA and a cash acquisition in the same transaction window is not a headline-grabbing move. It is, however, exactly the kind of quiet roster management that tends to reveal what a front office actually believes about the players on the fringes of its depth chart — and occasionally, the player brought in via the cash deal turns out to matter more than the transaction log suggests at the time.

For now, per MLB Trade Rumors, Geoff Hartlieb is expected to be designated for assignment, Scott Blewett is expected to join the 40-man roster, and the A's continue the work of figuring out what they have.