Athletics select Ben Bowden, designate Connor Thomas for assignment

The Athletics have selected left-hander Ben Bowden from Triple-A Las Vegas, per MLB Trade Rumors, adding a bullpen arm while simultaneously designating left-hander Connor Thomas for assignment to clear the corresponding 40-man roster spot.

What happened

Per MLB Trade Rumors, the Athletics selected Bowden from Triple-A Las Vegas at 4:40 p.m. The corresponding move arrived roughly two hours later: to make room on the 40-man roster, the club designated Thomas for assignment.

Thomas's path to this designation was brief and eventful. The Athletics had claimed him off waivers from the Braves earlier this week, then optioned him to Triple-A Las Vegas — a stay that apparently lasted only as long as it took to finalize the Bowden selection. Now Thomas faces the waiver process again, and his history with that process is worth understanding.

Why it matters

The Thomas situation carries a wrinkle that makes the next several days worth watching. Per MLB Trade Rumors, Thomas has been outrighted twice before in his career — first by the Cardinals, the organization that drafted him, and later by the Brewers. Under general league rules, a player who has been outrighted twice previously earns the right to reject a subsequent outright assignment. So if Thomas clears waivers and the Athletics attempt to send him outright to Triple-A Las Vegas, he would have the right to refuse that assignment, per the report.

That is a meaningful fork in the road. The Athletics claimed Thomas off waivers from Atlanta earlier this week, which suggests they saw something worth preserving — most likely the Triple-A numbers that look nothing like his big-league line. Whether another club sees the same thing during the waiver period, or whether Thomas himself would exercise any rejection right, remains entirely unresolved.

The numbers

The gap between Thomas's Triple-A production and his major-league results is not subtle — it is the kind of split that makes a scout squint and a front office reach for the waiver wire anyway.

In 27 1/3 innings at Triple-A this season, Thomas carries a 1.98 ERA and a 3.62 xERA, per MLB Trade Rumors. A 59.2% groundball rate is cited as a primary driver of those results — a figure that suggests his stuff plays better when it stays on the ground than when it finds the air.

The major-league line tells a different story. In two appearances for Atlanta this season, Thomas allowed 15 runs in 6 1/3 innings, per the report. That performance pushed upward a career ERA that, per MLB Trade Rumors, already sat at 20.25 entering this year — built on surrendering a dozen runs across 5 1/3 innings during his first MLB season with the Brewers. The arithmetic is unforgiving, but the sample is also small enough that the Triple-A numbers are not simply noise. An xERA of 3.62 suggests the underlying contact profile is meaningfully different from what the run totals imply.

Bowden, the player the Athletics are actually adding to their active roster, was selected from Triple-A Las Vegas, per MLB Trade Rumors. The report does not include a season line for Bowden.

Where the club stands

The Athletics carry a record of 64-98 (.395), sitting 4th in the AL West, 17 games back in the division. The club has been eliminated from both the division race and the Wild Card race, and enters this move on a two-game losing streak. Their Wild Card ranking sits at 11th, 20.0 relative to the cut line — numbers that frame these roster decisions less as playoff positioning and more as organizational evaluation.

The upcoming schedule offers a reasonable look at what Bowden might be asked to do. The Athletics host the Detroit Tigers at Sutter Health Park on Saturday, August 1, with Jack Perkins projected against Framber Valdez. Sunday, August 2 brings another home game against Detroit, with Gage Jump projected opposite Keider Montero. The club then travels to Cincinnati for a Tuesday, August 4 date at Great American Ball Park, where J.T. Ginn is projected to face Brady Singer.

A bullpen addition in late July, for a club already eliminated from postseason contention, is less about October and more about getting looks at arms who might factor into future plans — or, in Thomas's case, arms whose futures are now being sorted out by the waiver process.

What we don't know yet

The report does not specify what prompted the Athletics to select Bowden at this particular moment, nor does it include details about his 2026 season line at Triple-A Las Vegas. The club has not announced a corresponding roster move beyond the Thomas designation, and the full shape of the 40-man and active roster is not detailed in the report.

On the Thomas side, the key unknowns are sequential: Does he clear waivers? If so, does the club attempt an outright assignment? And if they do, does Thomas — given his two prior outrights — choose to accept or reject it? None of those questions have answers yet, per MLB Trade Rumors.

What to watch

The 48-hour waiver clock on Thomas is the most immediate thing to monitor. If he clears unclaimed, the Athletics face a decision about whether to attempt the outright to Las Vegas, knowing Thomas holds the right to decline. If another club claims him, the Athletics lose him entirely — which would make the sequence of claiming him off Atlanta's waiver wire and then designating him within the same week a notably short chapter.

Bowden's role out of the bullpen in the Detroit series will offer the first look at what the Athletics saw in him at Triple-A Las Vegas. With the club eliminated and the schedule running through August, these appearances carry evaluation weight more than standings weight — which, for a 64-98 club, is exactly the kind of context that makes late-summer roster shuffles worth following even when the pennant race is long settled.