DETROIT >> Make that three centerfielders down.

Tigers’ president Scott Harris, before he announced the official signing of veteran outfielder Manuel Margot, dropped some more tough injury news Monday night.

Wenceel Perez, who was expected to get the bulk of the playing time in center field early in the season, is going to start the season on the injured list with inflammation in his lower back.

“It’s the hardest I’ve seen a single position hit in spring training in my career,” Harris said on a Zoom call from San Francisco, where the Tigers were scheduled to play the first of two exhibition games against the Giants.

To make room for Margot, Harris announced that starting center fielder Parker Meadows (out with a nerve issue in his upper right arm) was transferred to the 60-day injured list. Which means the earliest he can return is May 24.

Utility player Matt Vierling (rotator cuff strain), who is the backup center fielder, will be placed on the 10-day injured list on Thursday before the start of the regular season.

And now comes the news on Perez.

“Wenceel completed yesterday’s game (in Clearwater) and after reported that his back didn’t feel right,” Harris said. “Right then we decided to leave him in Florida to get and MRI, a CT scan and a bone scan.”

Those tests revealed the inflamation and Perez is expected to receive an injection in the back later this week.

“He’ll be out at least a month,” Harris said.

So now what?

“Everything is on the table for us,” Harris said. “We have a number of internal solutions that we are working through right now. We may have to adjust our strategy to win games until we get healthy. We may do some different things on the field.”

Outfield chaos?

“We have a really resilient group that has shown in the past that it can win in a bunch of different ways,” he said. “We’re going to have to leverage that until we get healthy.”

Moving Riley Greene from left field over to center on a more full-time basis is not going to be the answer.

“I don’t think it changes how we feel about Riley,” Harris said. “Stepping back and assessing it from a higher-level perspective, when you go through injuries, it’s always tempting to run your healthy guys out there more often to compensate for the losses. But we have to resist the temptation to do that.

“If we run those guys into the ground by playing them too much, we’re compounding our issues.”

Greene, Harris said, will play some in center but will stay primarily in left field, where last year he won the Fielding Bible Award with a plus-14 defensive runs.

Margot, who Harris said he signed (one year, $1.3 million plus incentives) before the Perez news, was once an elite defender in center but has mostly played corner outfield the last few years.

“We think he fits this group because he can strengthen our defense,” Harris said. “He can really hit left-handed pitching and he can control the strike zone. You may see him in center a little bit throughout the year, but we think he’s more additive to this group on the corners.”

With the off day Wednesday to sort through everything, after the two exhibitions in San Francisco, Harris wasn’t offering any set-in-stone solutions.

With Perez out, outfielders Jahmai Jones, Justyn-Henry Malloy, plus Ryan Kreidler, who was optioned to Toledo last week, are back in the mix for one roster spot. Kreidler was summoned to San Francisco and expected to play center field in both games.

“Ryan is an elite defender,” Harris said. “He makes our defense better when he’s on the field. Pitching and defense is going to be really important moving forward.”

Jones has played a little in center but he and Malloy are both primarily corner outfielders. Javier Báez and Zach McKinstry have both played in center field this spring. Margot played 21 games in center last season and was a minus-9 defensive runs saved.

“We are going to leverage what we believe is a really talented pitching staff and we have to protect that pitching staff with defense,” Harris said. “Exactly what that means for who is on the roster and how we’re going to deploy all these players is to be determined.”

Margot, entering his 10th big-league season, is coming off the worst offensive year of his career, posting a 76 OPS-plus with the Twins. He has a career .307 on-base percentage with a low 17.6% strikeout rate.

“We think he has plus bat-to-ball skills and we think he can conduct a major-league quality at-bat,” Harris said. “And we think there is some sneaky pop in there. He hits the ball really hard and he was hitting the ball hard in spring training (with the Brewers). He’s a guy who can touch the baseball (make contact) and help us that way as we search for more contact.

“And he is a great weapon against left-handed pitching (career .753 OPS).”

The Tigers’ figure-it-out mentality is going to be tested right of the gate. But as Harris pointed out, this is not forever.

“These guys are going to be back,” he said. “All three centerfielders are going to be back and healthy and performing this season. It’s about how we come up with the right strategy in the interim to win as many games as we can until we get to full strength.”