6:51pm: Jon Heyman of The New York Post reports that DeJong suffered a hamstring injury that’ll require season-ending surgery.
5:45pm: It appears that Paul DeJong, who recently signed a minor league deal with the Tigers, is done for the year. The Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens have placed him on the full-season injured list, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com.
An injury isn’t listed but it’s likely something related to his lower body. DeJong last appeared in a game on May 12th. In that game, he was visibly limping around the bases to score a run, as seen in this clip from Tigers ML Report.
It will unfortunately be a second straight injury-marred season for DeJong. Last year, he missed over two months after a fastball hit him in the face and caused several fractures. He was limited to just 57 games with the Nationals and didn’t perform especially well when he was on the field.
He had to settle for a minor league deal with the Yankees coming into 2026. He hit well for their Triple-A club for a while. He was held back by a .167 batting average on balls in play but hit six home runs in 83 plate appearances, leading to a lopsided .203/.361/.516 line and 123 wRC+.
He opted out of that deal and was able to secure a fresh minor league deal with the Tigers, which was a pretty decent landing spot considering they had some injured infielders. But in just his sixth game with the Mud Hens, he was bitten by the injury bug himself and will apparently miss the remainder of the campaign.
Assuming he can get healthy for the 2027 season, he should be able to secure another minor league deal somewhere. DeJong strikes out a ton but hits home runs and is a solid shortstop defender, with the ability to play other positions as well. Dating back to the start of 2022, he has been punched out in 32.1% of his 1,327 plate appearances but has hit 50 homers in that time.
For the Tigers, as mentioned, they have been dealing with a number of infield injuries. Gleyber Torres, Trey Sweeney and Javier Báez are all on the IL at the moment. Due to those injuries and others, the club went out and added DeJong for extra depth. With DeJong no longer available, that could prompt them to find a way to bring in someone else.
Photo courtesy of Brad Mills, Imagn Images
