Trei Cruz had just finished a workout last week and was headed back home when his phone started buzzing. The call was from Tigers vice president Ryan Garko, who in his role overseeing player development for one of the best farm systems in the game has followed Cruz’s career in the organization for four years.
Calls from Garko can make or break careers. For Cruz, the news brought him to tears: He’s now on the Tigers’ 40-man roster.
“I was emotional,” Cruz admitted. “I shed a couple tears, I will say. Happy tears. I was ecstatic, man.”
It’s not exactly a Major League callup, but it puts a player in position to be called up at any point. It guarantees a spot in Major League camp for Spring Training. Just as important for Cruz, it’s a sign the organization values a player enough to not risk losing him in the Rule 5 Draft.
“My dad was out of town,” he said, “but my mom, I got to call her and she was crying. She was screaming on the phone, crying, excited. It was a proud mom moment for her.
”Calling my grandfather as well, he was extremely excited. He’s trying to buy all this Detroit Tigers gear.”
One quirk with that: His grandfather is former Astros great Jose Cruz Sr.
“He can’t do too much,” Trei said, “because he has to support his Astros.”
Baseball has had plenty of generational stories recently. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Daulton Varsho just came within a whisker of a World Series title with the Blue Jays. Bobby Witt Jr., who won a batting title and finished runner-up in AL MVP voting in 2024, won a Platinum Glove Award this month. The sons of former big leaguers Reggie Willits and Matt Holliday were the first and fourth overall picks in the MLB Draft in July.
Cruz is the third generation in a baseball family. Jose Cruz Sr. is an Astros Hall of Famer and a legend in Houston, where he spent 13 of his 19 MLB seasons as a player plus 13 as a coach. Jose Cruz Jr. played 12 years and was a star in Toronto, where Trei was born.
With that history, success might have seemed inevitable when the Tigers drafted Trei in the third round in 2020. But his path has been anything but smooth.
The fit seemed ideal, a switch-hitting shortstop out of traditional powerhouse Rice University with the athleticism to play almost anywhere joining an organization that needed homegrown infielders. Once his dad joined A.J. Hinch’s coaching staff a few months later, it was a family affair.
“Definitely the biggest thing they've taught me is how to handle failure,” Trei said of his dad and granddad shortly after being drafted. “Because baseball’s a game of failure.”
Those lessons served him well once his pro career began. Cruz hit just .161 across three levels in his first season in 2021. He showed progress all around in 2022 and earned a late-season promotion to Double-A Erie, where he played 299 games over the next four years.
Cruz played a key part in back-to-back Eastern League titles for the SeaWolves, but he struggled to earn a step up to Triple-A Toledo.
“Erie taught me a lot,” Cruz said. “It’s a battle to grind. Erie, people say it’s not the most fantastic destination, but you know what? I appreciated my time there and learned a lot from there. I’m grateful to be a guy that could play every single day there.”
Two years ago, Cruz worked with his dad — by then the head coach at Rice — to adjust his swing to produce more power from his hips and lower body. Instead of chasing home runs, he took more of a doubles mindset. He also took the Tigers’ organizational philosophy on dominating the strike zone to heart and dropped his chase rate.
Then, like many Tigers infield prospects, came the positional versatility. After Cruz worked around the infield his first couple years, Detroit introduced him to center field, the position where his dad and grandfather both began their careers.
“I think the center field part is a pride thing for me,” he said, “because I come from a family of outfielders. And so, that’s something I was able to pick up quickly because having help from my grandfather and my dad, who was a Gold Glover in the outfield, really helped me make that transition easier. And I’m grateful the Tigers allowed me to make that transition.”
Not only was Cruz a standout player in Erie in 2024, he was a veteran leader. But just as he seemed near a promotion, he tore the UCL in his elbow, leading to season-ending Tommy John surgery. He rehabbed in time for Spring Training and earned nearly a dozen appearances in big league camp, but he couldn’t crack a cluttered Toledo roster.
Back to Erie he went. He responded with the best year of his career. Finally, when top prospects Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark were promoted to Erie, Cruz went to Toledo. He not only held his own, he outperformed his Erie numbers.
The combined stats produced the breakout he’d been seeking: .279/.411/.456, with 33 doubles, 13 homers, 66 RBIs, 95 runs scored and 17 stolen bases. He walked 102 times in 127 games. He played six different positions.
“Going into this year after getting surgery on my elbow, I wanted to make a goal,” Cruz said. “I was going to come back better, come back stronger, and I’m going to make this 40-man roster one way or another.”
The Tigers kept him in Toledo for workouts during Detroit’s postseason run, the first sign of how Detroit had come to value him. Then came the call.
Now, becoming the third generation Cruz in the big leagues no longer seems like a dream.
“It was a surreal moment,” Cruz said. “It’s something that I’ve worked on ever since being drafted.”