This is another difficult one, as we’re talking about another player who didn’t have the opportunity to get through spring training. I know I've brought that up multiple times, but spring training is extremely important, no matter how unimportant it seems. I don’t look at spring training numbers as any indicator of what type of season a player is going to have, but it’s been proven time and again. Those players need these reps. The baseball season is a long grind, and you need to get your sea legs under you.
Wenceel Perez, much like Parker Meadows, missed pretty much all of spring training and had to rehab his way back to the big league lineup. Unlike Parker Meadows, the pretzel man didn’t miss a beat. He was rolling for a while there. It seemed like he picked up where he left off after a very successful season in 2024 and was becoming a formidable part of this lineup. He was also playing a pretty fantastic right field, which is remarkable, because he came up through the Tigers system as a middle infielder. Then, much like a heavy majority of the Tigers' lineup, Wenzel Perez slammed face-first into a wall going 200 mph. He was abysmal down the stretch, finishing the year mired in a 5-for-48 48 slump, and didn’t get much better in the postseason, where he was 2 for 19.
Perez is still a young player, and I want to chalk up a lot of his struggles as growing pains, but it ended up being a disappointing campaign for a guy who seemed on the verge of a breakout for quite a while. Somewhere in Wenceel Perez is an exceptional Major League player, and I expect him to be part of this core for quite a while. He offers a lot of defensive versatility, and for a long time, he seemed like one of the few tigers in this lineup who was consistently putting together good at-bats.
I am being a little bit too harsh. The way the Tigers' season ended left a sour taste in my mouth for many players on this team, but I am grading each guy based on their entire campaign, and it’s undeniable that Perez took many steps forward in 2025. The offensive numbers, while they took a severe dip in the last month of the season, were across the board better than they were in his rookie campaign. I think that he’s got more pop in his bat than the Tigers ever expected. We saw 13 home runs in 100 games this year. I think this is a guy with 20-home run potential, which I don’t believe anyone projected when he was coming up through the minor leagues.
Since I’ve started doing the series, I've been reminded of just how many of these players share similar traits. In some ways, that’s a major positive, and in some ways, that’s a huge detriment. Wenceel is another fine player, and I expect him to be here for a long time. He’s an excellent clubhouse presence, and you can tell that AJ has a great amount of respect for him, but he’s also another example of a player who doesn’t dominate the strike zone the way that Scott Harris wants. When you’re not a high on-base guy, people are going to find you very easy to pitch to.
Wenceel was mired in a prolonged slump to end the campaign. The team as a whole struggled to hit breaking balls, but he was getting beaten by fastballs at 92-93 mph down the middle. There’s still a lot of like about his game, and I think as a scrappy piece toward the bottom of the lineup, he could be a major contributor, but the way he finished the season definitely changed his trajectory a little bit. His ceiling is no longer as high as I once perceived it to be, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t be a valuable piece here.
FINAL GRADE: C+