DETROIT >> If you can play, they will find you.

Will Vest is living proof of that.

In 2017, he was a light-hitting shortstop at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He’d talked his coach into letting him pitch the year before but ended up missing all of 2016 recovering from Tommy John surgery.

And with just a 31-game showcase that year, Vest managed to get on the Tigers’ radar enough to warrant a 12th-round draft pick.

“Honestly, we went to the conference tournament in my first year of pitching and first year off Tommy John, and I was just gassed,” Vest said. “By the time we got to the tournament I was throwing like 90-92 mph.”

Fortunately, the Tigers saw him earlier in the season when he was throwing 97-mph gas past a group of Texas Christian University hitters that would win 50 games that season.

“I had already talked to a good amount of scouts,” Vest said. “But that game probably helped me out quite a bit.”

It certainly convinced the Tigers scouting director at the time, Scott Pleis, that this was an arm he could work with.

“It’s been a crazy ride,” said Vest, who has grown into one of manager AJ Hinch’s most trusted leverage relievers. “But the majority of guys have unique stories. That’s what’s cool about this game. Guys come from everywhere.”

Vest, though, came from relative nowhere, in baseball terms. When he showed up at short-season Connecticut later in the summer of 2017, he was as big a longshot to get to the majors as anyone on that roster.

But it was there he got some sage advice from his pitching coach, the legendary Ace Adams.

“I learned a lot from ole’ Ace,” Vest said. “Right before my first outing he goes, ‘Hey. You’re not just pitching for the Tigers. You are pitching for 29 other teams. If you are good enough to be a big-leaguer, you will be one.’”

Vest also mentioned, with a chuckle, another piece of advice Adams gave him:

“He told me that Babe Ruth and all the other greats are dead, so we don’t have to worry about them in the box anymore.”

Comforting.

Vest, though, took that first tip to heart. Off that 2017 Connecticut team, he is one of five players to make it and one of two still in the big leagues. The others: Drew Carlton, Matt Manning, Brandyn Sittinger and Dane Myers, a pitcher at Connecticut who is now playing center field for the Miami Marlins.

“There has always been intrigue around Vest because of the fastball,” Hinch said. “I get asked from the opposing team about him a lot. Even when he first broke in there was something about his delivery and his fast arm, the ball jumps on you a little bit.

“He’s got great adrenaline and there’s an edge to him. And he’s got weapons.”

But Adams was right, other teams around the league noticed the same thing and when the Tigers left him unprotected before the 2020 Rule 5 draft, the Seattle Mariners snatched him.

Fortunately for the Tigers, as it turned out, the Mariners lost patience with him after a couple of rough outings in June and took him off the big-league roster, which meant the Tigers had first dibs to take him back.

That wasn’t the last time Vest needed to re-evaluate and adjust.

“People forget, and I try to remind guys who think this is smooth sailing all the time, we sent this guy out two years ago to work on a lot of different things,” Hinch said, referencing the fact Vest was among the last cuts out of camp before the 2023 season.

“He took it to heart and came back a better pitcher. He’s been a leverage reliever for us ever since including getting some of the most important outs last season and this season, so far.”

Things clicked for Vest late in 2023. Over his final 15 appearances that year he allowed two earned runs and held hitters to a .132 average with 23 strikeouts and one walk in 15 innings.

Hinch leaned on him down the stretch last season, too, and Vest was stout, picking up a save with six holds, allowing two runs in 13 innings with 11 strikeouts and one walk.

Then in the playoffs, he allowed a run in six innings with nine strikeouts and no walks.

Useful, yes?

“I think it comes with mechanics and just being able to repeat my mechanics year after year,” Vest said. “I’ve gotten more in tune with how I move and I’ve been able to repeat the throws every time. It’s kind of simplified things.

“And when that really took off was the end of 2023. That’s when I simplified my mechanics a lot and I was in the zone a lot more. Just kind of built off of that.”

His fastball remains consistently at 96-97 mph and can hit 98 when he’s amped. That’s still his moneymaker, his ultimate tool against right-handed and left-handed hitters.

But he’s made subtle improvements to both his slider and changeup that has enhanced his arsenal.

“Hitters don’t like it when he comes into the game,” Hinch said. “Because of the characteristics of his stuff and his demeanor, he is uniquely suited for important innings at the backend of games.”

His ability to dominate lefties (.206 last year with a .302 on-base and .247 slug) doesn’t hurt, either.

“I’m just trying to get them out,” Vest said. “I don’t think about lefty-righty too much. That’s just where the game is now. With the three-batter rule, if you come up here, you’ve got to get both sides out. They don’t have the luxury of having a lefty specialist anymore.”

And if you are going to be pitching with games on the line, you are going to have to deal with the best hitters in the game, and they come from both sides of the plate.

Vest got another reminder of that in the second game of the season in Los Angeles. He came into a 2-2 game in the bottom of the eighth inning and struck out righty Austin Barnes and then got a called third strike on lefty Shohei Ohtani, a masterful sequence by Vest, finishing him with the last thing Ohtani expected, three straight 97-mph heaters.

Then he left the next pitch, another heater, over the plate to righty Mookie Betts, who hit it out of the park. That’s the only smudge on Vest’s ledger so far this season.

“The best of the best, they hit same-side pitching really well,” Vest said. “Shohei, Freddie (Freeman), it doesn’t matter if it’s lefty or righty, they’re going to hit you.

“If you want to be good, you better be able to get both sides out.”

Ole’ Ace would be proud.