KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When Wenceel Pérez suffered a left oblique strain in early August, he had been an everyday outfielder for the Detroit Tigers for roughly three months. The 24-year-old needed one month to rest, recover and rehab, but when he returned from the injured list, everything was different.

Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter — two outfielders ahead of Pérez on the depth chart — returned from their injuries while Pérez was sidelined with his injury.

Therefore, Pérez doesn’t start every game anymore.

“He’s a guy that was hitting in the middle of our order, gets hurt, and when he comes back, everything on our team has changed, and he didn’t change,” manager A.J. Hinch said after Monday’s game. “He hasn’t missed a beat. We hurried him back to get him in the mix because having a switch-hitter, even if it was on the bench, is going to be very valuable to make decisions during the game.”

Pérez has transitioned from an everyday player to an off-the-bench weapon in pinch-hit situations for matchup advantages. He hasn’t let the change in his role impact the way he acts on a day-to-day basis.

He is a team-first player.

“The way we play here, we are together,” Pérez said. “Everybody gets his opportunity to play, and when I get the opportunity, I’m going to try to produce as much as I can. I’m trying to be ready for it and bring energy to the team.”

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What happened in the sixth inning of Monday’s 7-6 win over the Kansas City Royals showcased the value of Pérez. He entered as a pinch-hitter to face left-handed reliever Sam Long with runners on the corners and one out, but right-handed reliever John Schreiber was warming up in the bullpen.

“I was just trying to bring home the guy on third, no matter what,” Pérez said.

Royals manager Matt Quatraro had to make a decision: left-hander or right-hander against the switch-hitting Pérez. He has the same splits from both sides of the plate this season, but he hits for more power from the left side against right-handers.

The Royals stuck with Long, so Pérez swung from the right side of the plate. He hit a fifth-pitch slider from Long to left field for a two-run double, tying the game, 6-6. He then scored for a 7-6 lead on Matt Vierling’s single off Schreiber.

“He threw me a first-pitch slider,” Pérez said. “He probably thought that I couldn’t see it, so he tried to throw it to me again to get me out. He got me pretty bad on the first-pitch slider. It looked like a cutter. I thought he would throw it to me again.”

He is hitting .240 with nine home runs, 27 walks and 80 strikeouts across 102 games in 2024, his rookie season. As part of that, he is hitting .250 (3-for-12) in 13 plate appearances as a pinch-hitter, including three of those opportunities in five games since returning from injury.

Pérez didn’t make the Opening Day roster out of spring training, but five months later, he is proving to be an important player for the Tigers — even if he isn’t considered an everyday player anymore — as the team pushes for the postseason.

“It’s special,” Pérez said. “All that matters is winning the game. You’re not thinking about you. You’re thinking about the game, and going to the playoffs.”

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

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Now that he has locked up Lucas Raymond for eight years, will Moritz Seider be far behind?

“We continue to talk,” Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman said Tuesday. “I’m hopeful we can get a deal done at some point – sooner than later would be better for both parties. I don’t think we’re terribly far apart but we’ll hopefully we can progress to get him here as soon as possible.”

The “here” would be ideally be Traverse City, where the Wings are slated to begin training camp Thursday. It’s not the biggest deal if Seider misses that – but the longer it drags out, the more disruptive it will be.

MORE: Detroit Red Wings sign Lucas Raymond to 8-year extension worth more than $8M per year

After signing Raymond for years with an average annual value of $8,075,000 Monday, shortly after signing Jonatan Berggren for one year at $825,000, the Wings have about $8.7 million left in their coffer. It would be huge for them if Seider, 23, agrees to a deal with such a cap hit – the same as that carried by captain Dylan Larkin – since fellow hotshot young defenseman Rasmus Dahlin is getting $11 million annually from the Buffalo Sabres.

Raymond, who signed an eight-year, $64.6 million deal Monday, spent part of his off season training with Seider in Seider’s native Germany.

“Both me and Mo first of all are really, really good friends,” Raymond said. “We’ve kind of gone through this journey together, almost every step of the way. We came into the league together. We’re in the same situation this summer. Of course we talk. I think for us it’s more just nice to get your mind of things, hang out as friends. You talk enough about the contract with agents and people asking. For both of us, it’s just nice to hang out as buddies and work out together. I had a great time in Germany and it was really fun seeing him.”

Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter. Her latest book, “The Franchise: Detroit Red Wings: A Curated History of the Red Wings,” will be available October 2024. Her books, “On the Clock: Behind the Scenes with the Detroit Red Wings at the NHL Draft,” and “The Big 50: The Men and Moments that made the Detroit Red Wings” are available from  Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies available via her e-mail.

DETROIT – If the Detroit Tigers somehow make the playoffs this season, Monday is the night we’ll all remember.

Jason Benetti and Andy Dirks said it several times throughout the telecast on Bally Sports Detroit: It felt like a playoff atmosphere inside Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.

That sentence would have sounded absurd on Aug. 22 — less than a month ago! — when the Tigers had a losing record and sat 9.5 games out of the final wild card spot.

They had just traded away Jack Flaherty and a few other contributors. Reese Olson and Casey Mize were injured. Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene had just returned from long absences.

Nobody at that moment considered that the Tigers might matter by mid-September — not even the Tigers themselves.

But somehow, some way, here we are.

The Tigers went into Monday night trailing the Twins by 2.5 games. But by 8:30 p.m., it looked like this magical run might finally come to an end.

With the Twins leading the Guardians 3-0 in the middle innings, Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. hit a grand slam off of Olson that put the Tigers in a 4-0 hole.

It sure looked like the Tigers would fall 3.5 games behind the Twins, which would all but extinguish their flickering playoff hopes (especially since they don’t hold the tiebreaker).

But this younger version of the Tigers is never dead. After falling behind 5-1 in the fourth, a Colt Keith homer brought them within a run in the fifth. The Royals scored again in the bottom half, but the Tigers came through with three more in the sixth to take their first lead.

“The Tigers lead, and just as that happened, Cleveland beat Minnesota, 4-3,” Benetti roared on Bally. “The Tigers lead 7-6. Minnesota has lost tonight, and who knows what our next two weeks are going to be like.”

Suddenly, instead of 3.5 back, the Tigers pulled within 1.5 games of a playoff spot. That’s closer than they were to sixth place in the wild card standings on Aug. 22.

Detroit hasn’t been within two games of a playoff spot in the second half since its last winning season in 2016. Even throughout the past four weeks, the Tigers have mostly hovered in the range of three games behind the Twins.

But on Monday, in the matter of about an hour, the Tigers went from the brink of unofficial elimination to the best spot they’ve been in in eight years.

if they cap off this improbable run by sneaking into the postseason, this is the night we’ll remember.