Carlos Hernandez DFA’d; Geoff Hartlieb promoted from Triple-A Toledo

The reliever carousel continues…

In a rather unsurprising turn of events, the Detroit Tigers designated RHP Carlos Hernandez for assignment on Thursday. More notable was the promotion of right-handed reliever Geoff Hartlieb from Triple-A Toledo in his place.

The Tigers just signed the 31-year-old journeyman reliever to a minor league deal back on July 14. Hartlieb stands six-foot-five and weighing in at 240 pounds. At times he’s touched triple digits in his career, so he’s gotten plenty of chances despite never solving his control issues long enough to establish himself in the major leagues for long. He made just two appearances for the Mud Hens since the All-Star break, though both were perfect outings, over 2 ¹⁄₃ innings before the call-up.

Hartlieb throws with a pretty standard arm slot. Beyond the fastball, which has a bit of cut at its best, he packs a good slider which has been his bread and butter this season. He’s thrown the breaking ball 53.6 percent of the time this year in the minor leagues. He mixes in his fourseamer at 94-95 mph, topping at 97.6 mph this year, and will use a sinker at times to jam right-handers inside. As recently as 2024, Hartlieb was hitting 99-100 mph at peak, but the extra heat hasn’t been in evidence this season.

This is a tale as old as time, or at least baseball. Hartlieb has never been able to locate consistently enough to stick with a team after the team that drafted him, the Pittsburgh Pirates , released him back in 2020. He’s been with five other teams since then. The odds of things finally working out aren’t any better than they were with Hernandez.

If there’s a glimmer of hope, it’s that Hartlieb has really cut down the walks this season, producing a 6.6 percent walk rate against a strikeout rate of 27.6 percent. He got a very brief look at the bigs again this year with the New York Yankees , but a disastrous outing made that a short stay and he only appeared twice before returning to their Triple-A club.

Ultimately, this is just the Tigers continuing to hunt for what is essentially free relief help. Hartlieb has had a lot of opportunities to break through over the last 6-7 years and hasn’t made it happen. He’s only been with the org for a minute, so it’s hard to expect any significant overhaul in his stuff, mechanics or command.

The Tigers need relief help badly, and they’re going to have to part with prospects to get it, but it’s still worth trying to find more arms who can contribute down the stretch. We’ll see if Hartlieb has anything to offer.