Justin Verlander was scheduled to come off the injured list to start on Sunday in Detroit, but instead, a new injury has popped up. He will stay on the IL after suffering a left hamstring strain while throwing a side session while the team was in Houston. In addition, Wenceel Pérez’s plyo band misadventure sends him to the injured list with a left orbital fracture. Reports suggest that his eye and eyesight are not affected, which is about the only good news out of any of this. Utility player Trei
Cruz has been called up and will start in right field for the Tigers on Friday night, making his family just the seventh to put three different generation of players into the major leagues.
The Verlander news is unfortunate, but it might also be a bit of mercy. Taking Keider Montero out of the starting rotation isn’t the move right now in a baseball sense. With the Tigers likely to trade Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize, at a minimum, at the trade deadline, they might actually have more use for innings from Verlander in the final two months of the season. For all the bad of the 2026 season, there may still be an opportunity for Verlander to ride off into the sunset in front of the Detroit faithful in August and September. We’ll see if he can finally get right, or if it’s just not there anymore at age 43.
As for Pérez, the concern from the team, combined with the lack of specifics about the plyo band incident, were pretty concerning. Beyond baseball, there was fear that Pérez might have taken a shot to the eye itself. An orbital fracture isn’t great, but that will heal up with no long lasting effects, presumably. Just another bizarre injury in an absolutely cursed season.
As for Trei Cruz, while his statline in Toledo is pretty ugly, it needs to be remembered that he was injured for part of that time, and is only now a few weeks into getting regular reps. His good numbers at Triple-A in 2025 are probably more indicative of the real player. Either way, the switch hitter is going to do a whole lot of damage at the plate anyway. His game is working really pesky at-bats, situational hitting, stealing some bases, and occasionally chipping in some gap power. His real value is in the ability to play anywhere on the diamond, including shortstop, and play against left-handers as well as right-handed pitching. That might make it a little easier to get something out of a bench that has been downright horrendous in 2026.
In any case, with the season pretty well lost at this point, it’s just nice to see some new faces while we wait for Skubal and Mize to get it going enough to stabilize their trade value.
