3:15pm: Outfielder Wenceel Pérez is being transferred to the 60-day injured list as the corresponding 40-man move, per Evan Woodbery of MLive Media Group. Perez hit the 10-day IL a week ago after a freak accident. A plyo band snapped and hit him near his eye, fracturing one of his orbital bones. His full timeline is unclear but it appears the Tigers don’t expect him back soon. This transfer means he can’t be reinstated until the middle of August.
1:32pm: The Tigers have claimed right-hander Yilber Díaz off waivers from the Diamondbacks, reports Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic. Detroit’s 40-man roster is full, so they’ll need a corresponding move to accommodate their latest waiver addition.
Díaz, 25, has made only one big league appearance this season. To say it went poorly would be an understatement. He recorded two outs but was tagged for seven runs on seven hits and a walk, resulting in one of the more outlandish ERA marks you’ll ever see next to a pitcher’s name: 94.50. Of course, that’s merely one awful appearance. Prior to that brutal day, Díaz carried a 4.31 ERA in 31 1/3 big league innings, dating back to 2024.
Not long ago, Díaz was considered one of Arizona’s top prospects. Baseball America listed him third among D-backs farmhands heading into the 2025 season. At the time, he was coming off 104 1/3 innings of 3.80 ERA ball split between Double-A and an exorbitantly hitter-friendly setting in Triple-A Reno. He’d also made his big league debut in that same ’24 season, tossing 28 1/3 frames with a 3.81 ERA.
Díaz’s 2025 season as a disaster across the board. He allowed three runs in his only three major league frames and was shelled in Reno. The Venezuelan-born righty pitched 41 innings with the Diamondbacks’ Triple-A club and was rocked for an 11.63 ERA while battling poor command and a huge susceptibility to home runs. That brutal season understandably tanked his prospect stock, although the 2026 season has been a bit better — at least in the minors.
This year, Díaz has pitched 32 Triple-A frames and allowed a 4.50 ERA while striking out 29.1% of his opponents. His 14.2% walk rate is still far too high, but he’s reined in the home runs, cut back on his walks and hasn’t been charged with even on wild pitch. He threw 10 wild pitches in last year’s 41 frames with Reno. It’s still poor command, of course, but Díaz has at least taken a step in the right direction in that regard and has several other intriguing traits.
Díaz is sitting 96.8 mph on his four-seamer this year — an offering that’s previously drawn plus grades from scouting reports. His 12.9% swinging-strike rate is more than two percentage points north of the major league average. And, a year after allowing a huge 90.7 mph average exit velocity and a big 43.1% hard-hit rate in Reno, opponents have averaged a modest 87.7 mph with a much-improved 37.8% hard-hit rate.
Díaz is in the last of three minor league option years, so the Tigers won’t need to plug him straight onto the big league roster. They can and likely will send him to Triple-A Toledo, where they can work with him on any tweaks they envision to improve his command while ideally retaining his strong velocity and bat-missing abilities. He’s a pure development flier right now, but considering he’s barely a year removed from being ranked at the back end of FanGraphs’ top 100 prospects, there’s little harm in taking a free look — even after a disastrous calendar year for the hard-throwing righty.
