{"id":24365,"date":"2025-07-26T20:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T20:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/24365\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T20:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T20:18:08","slug":"tigers-sign-luke-jackson-designate-geoff-hartlieb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/24365\/","title":{"rendered":"Tigers Sign Luke Jackson, Designate Geoff Hartlieb"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tigers have signed Luke Jackson<\/a> to a one-year, Major League contract, according to Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press<\/a>.\u00a0 Jackson signed a one-year, $1.35MM deal with the Rangers last winter and Texas is still responsible for most of the remaining salary still owed to the right-hander, with Detroit covering just the prorated portion of the MLB minimum salary.\u00a0 Right-hander Geoff Hartlieb<\/a> was designated for assignment in the corresponding moves on the 26-man and 40-man rosters.\u00a0 (The transactions were first noted earlier today by MLive.com\u2019s Evan Woodbery<\/a> and other members of the Tigers beat, who noted that Jackson had a locker and Hartlieb didn\u2019t in the Detroit clubhouse.)<\/p>\n

The Rangers just released Jackson yesterday following a two-day DFA period, so the righty not only quickly landed a new contract, but Jackson will get the opportunity to carve a niche for himself on a Tigers team in sore need of bullpen help.\u00a0 Detroit has lost 11 of its last 12 games, and the relief corps\u2019 7.04 ERA over that stretch has been a lead cause in what has become a major slump.\u00a0 Relief pitching is a clear priority heading into the deadline, and Jackson may be one of several bullpen additions that could be coming to Motown before July 31.<\/p>\n

Jackson posted a 4.11 ERA and 53.8% grounder rate over 35 innings with Texas this season.\u00a0 That excellent grounder rate, some decent batted-ball luck (.272 BABIP), and an above-average 7.5% barrel rate helped Jackson limit the damage despite strikeout (15.8%) and walk (12.5%) rates that ranked near the bottom of the league.\u00a0 Control has long been an issue for Jackson, but the lack of whiffs is a surprise, as he had a 27.1 K% over 289 2\/3 innings during the 2018-24 seasons.\u00a0 His overall effectiveness has tended to hinge on the success of his slider, and Jackson\u2019s primary offering has only a -1 in Statcast\u2019s Pitch Value metric this season.<\/p>\n

While Jackson hasn\u2019t looked very sharp, groundball specialists tend to have an even wider range of variance than most relievers.\u00a0 It was just in 2023 that Jackson had a 2.97 ERA in 33 1\/3 innings for the Giants, and his 1.98 ERA over 63 2\/3 innings for the 2021 Braves played a key role in Atlanta\u2019s path to the World Series.\u00a0 At the cost of essentially nothing, there\u2019s little risk for the Tigers in taking a flier on Jackson to see if a change of scenery can help him get on track.<\/p>\n

Hartlieb signed a minor league deal with Detroit two weeks ago, and he had a 9.00 ERA over two appearances and two innings with the Tigers at the MLB level when his contract was selected two days ago.\u00a0 A frequent visitor to DFA limbo, Hartlieb has been designated three times just within the last month \u2014 today\u2019s move off the Tigers\u2019 roster, and two previous instances when pitching with the Yankees.<\/p>\n

Hartlieb declined outright assignments after clearing waivers in each of those two earlier DFAs and elected free agency, which is his right as a player who has been previously outrighted in his career.\u00a0 Chances are he\u2019ll elect free agency again, and perhaps either re-sign with the Tigers on another minors deal or look elsewhere for another landing spot.\u00a0 Since Hartlieb is out of minor league options, he might well face more DFAs unless he can pitch consistently well enough to pitch in a big league bullpen.<\/p>\n

Hartlieb has an ungainly 21.60 ERA in 3 1\/3 total innings with New York and Detroit this season, boosting his career ERA to 7.95 over 82 2\/3 innings with six different Major League clubs.\u00a0 His 3.13 ERA over 37 1\/3 Triple-A innings this year is much more palatable, and it could get Hartlieb another look from a team as at least minor league depth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tigers have signed Luke Jackson to a one-year, Major League contract, according to Evan Petzold of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,24056,15626,591,85],"class_list":["post-24365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-geoff-hartlieb","tag-luke-jackson","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}