After long wait, Wenceel Pérez provides Tigers another sublime moment

New York Times

28-05-2025

DETROIT — It was the last day of spring training. The Tigers were in Clearwater. The final game was over. That is when Wenceel Pérez walked through a set of double doors and entered the clubhouse.
Most of his teammates were already dressed. Their bags were packed, their spirits were high. Another long spring was over. The Tigers were headed to San Francisco for a pair of exhibition games, and Opening Day was within reach.
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Pérez, though, was still in uniform. He wore a sullen look on his face. He made no eye contact and hurried toward the showers. We soon learned an explanation for the strange scene. Pérez reported pain in his lower back. He had missed time earlier in camp with back tightness. He has battled back injuries dating to his time in the minor leagues.
He tried to keep going, wanted to play through the pain. It finally became too much.
'I think I was swinging hard and too much,' Pérez said Tuesday. 'I was feeling out of my rhythm and out of my timing. I was taking so many swings, and then that's when I started feeling it again.'
Pérez had little choice but to tell the staff. He finished spring training with only three hits. So his teammates packed up and boarded the plane. Pérez stayed at the Tigers' spring training facility and reckoned with the road ahead.
'Yeah, it was tough,' Pérez said. 'I was trying to get through it, but it was just getting worse and worse and worse and worse.'
The rehab was not exactly easy, either. He went on the 60-day injured list with lumbar spine inflammation. Two months of his season were promised to be lost. He rehabbed with teammates like Matt Vierling and Alex Cobb, gathered and cooked out while the Tigers played on Opening Day. By May 16, he finally started a rehab assignment, one that caused him to bounce around. He started in High A, playing for the West Michigan Whitecaps in Fort Wayne. He was bumped to Triple-A Toledo, then moved to Class-A Lakeland because of weather concerns in the Midwest.
'Oh my gosh,' Pérez said. 'That was not a vacation.'
By Monday, Pérez was in Detroit awaiting activation. The Tigers had just gotten Vierling back from a shoulder injury and were finally nearing full strength. What ended up happening Tuesday tells the story of the 2025 Tigers in ways good and bad. Vierling, it turns out, went back on the IL with shoulder inflammation. He's going to get more tests. Right now, the vibes seem worrisome.
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'We put him on the injured list, which should tell you we don't think he can play,' manager A.J. Hinch said. 'We'll have more information as we get more tests, and more doctors need to weigh in.'
But Pérez was indeed activated and started in center field. This was some emotional yin and yang.
'We should not steal any joy away from getting Wenceel back,' Hinch said. 'This guy is so fun to be around. He's energetic, big smile, bounces around the clubhouse.'
By the bottom of the second inning on Tuesday, Pérez was up facing Giants right-hander Logan Webb. Pérez had gone just 4-for-18 during his rehab assignment. He found himself perturbed with the tedium of the minor leagues.
'At the beginning, it's just tough, getting the same stuff probably three or four times a game, in the spot, same team again,' Pérez said. 'I was a little bit frustrated with it, but it's a game, and I have to control what I can control and come back as strong as I can.'
Here in his first big-league at-bat since October, he took two balls, then got a 2-0 sinker over the heart of the plate. Pérez let loose the short stroke that came through for the Tigers in so many big moments last season. The ball crashed into his bat, then went screaming out over the right field wall at 100.5 mph. Home run.
WELCOME BACK WENCEEL 💣 pic.twitter.com/ljv4AUI3Ls
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) May 27, 2025
'So proud for that kid,' Hinch said. 'He's worked hard. Obviously, injuries are hard on everybody. Think about the last game of spring training, and we're getting on the plane to go to the exhibition game. He's got to report that he's not feeling great. That's a crushing blow at any point in the spring, but that's like getaway day for the most exciting day of the year at that point.'
Pérez struck out in his two subsequent at-bats, but the Tigers won 3-1, bumping their record to 36-20. Aside from tough luck with injuries, that's what it's been like so far this season. Cards that keep turning up in the Tigers' favor.
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Now back with the team, Pérez should see time at all three outfield spots. He is 25 years old, only one year removed from converting from infielder to outfielder last spring. In 2024, he was a pesky and dependable presence that often felt more important than his 1.1 fWAR would indicate.
He's joining a first-place team that has endured without its injured players for the first two months of the season.
Tuesday, he provided another memorable moment in what could become a summer full of them.