Stunning Wenceel Pérez stat shows Tigers need to demote him immediately

Wenceel Pérez hit his fourth homer of the season on Thursday against the Angels, which prompted the Tigers' Twitter admin to take a well-placed shot at 97.1 The Ticket host Jim Costa.

Costa had criticized Pérez's social media activity after Tuesday's game, when Pérez hit a homer in the Tigers' eventual 10-6 loss to the Angels. He called out the player for sharing multiple videos of the bomb on his story.

"Your team has lost 17 of 20," Costa wrote on Twitter. "You misplayed a ball in RF in the 8th inning to swing the game. You're the worst player in MLB (-1.0) WAR. Let's share the HR we hit 5 (FIVE!?!) different times on Instagram. Read the room."

The Tigers' admin posted Pérez's Thursday homer with the caption, "so good we might share it 5 (FIVE!?!) different times."

Well played, admin.

Pérez's bat was really the only one in the Tigers' lineup that was working on Thursday, too. Apart from the solo homer — the only run the Tigers could score through nine innings — he was the only Detroit batter to pick up more than one hit on the day.

But at the risk of foolishly aligning ourselves with someone who just got roasted on main, Costa may be right. Pérez is the worst position player in baseball right now based on fWAR. His failure to make that routine play on Tuesday was unacceptable.

There's a lot wrong with the Tigers right now and it would be wrong to pin it all on Pérez. But despite the occasional glimpses of power, he doesn't look like a guy who belongs on the major league roster.

Tigers need to demote Wenceel Pérez despite brief glimpses of power

Pérez has been a divisive figure among Tigers fans these days. He's technically Detroit's longest-tenured player, having been signed out of the Dominican Republic as an international free agent in 2016. Some fans have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because of it, and his early performance in Triple-A, before he was called up in Parker Meadows' absence, has hinted that he's too good for the minors.

But the Tigers have had plenty of in-between guys like that. Every Quad-A player they were infatuated with from 2023-2025 — Akil Baddoo, Ryan Kreidler, Ryan Vilade — would put up great numbers in Triple-A and then disappoint as soon as they got to the majors. Sure, they would sometimes go on a brief hot streak after being called up, but it would never last.

As they're unwilling to call Max Clark up right now, the Tigers don't have many options in terms of replacements. They're content to wait until Javy Báez, Parker Meadows, and Kerry Carpenter find their ways back (if the former two ever do).

But we shouldn't pretend that Pérez is sneakily a lot better than everyone thinks when he's batting under .200 in over 40 games and has a first percentile batting run value. We would bet that anyone the Tigers called up to replace him — Corey Julks, Trei Cruz, Ben Malgeri, whoever — could do better than that.

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