The 34-year-old hasn’t pitched in the major leagues since 2021.
The Detroit Tigers needed a starting pitcher this week while Reese Olson gets in one more rehabilitation start with the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens. Per multiple reports, they’ve decided to call up veteran southpaw Dietrich Enns.
Enns signed a minor league contract with the Tigers back in January, and he’s been the Toledo Mud Hens’ ace this season. The southpaw has made 14 starts with a 2.89 ERA/2.98 FIP combination. He also has a nearly five to one strikeout to walk ratio, with a 26.7 percent strikeout rate and a 5.6 percent walk rate, and just four home runs allowed across 62 1⁄3 innings of work.
The New York Yankees drafted Enns way back in the 2012 MLB amateur draft out of Central Michigan. The Chippewa dealt with a few injuries and never developed as the Yankees hoped. They eventually shipped him to the Minnesota Twins in 2017 in a trade for pitcher Jaime Garcia. By that point he was at the Triple-A level, but he didn’t reach the major leagues until 2021 when he was in the Tampa Bay Rays system. It was a brief stay.
Enns was released and decided to move to Japan to restart his career. He spent 2022 and 2023 pitching for the Seitama Seibu Lions, before heading to Korea last year to pitch for the LG Twins in the KBO. He slowly made some improvements to his command and his pitch mix over those years, and the Tigers front office, on the hunt for left-handed reinforcements, added him on a minor league deal.
Enns predominately throws three pitches these days. He leads with his fourseam fastball 43.9 percent of the time, averaging 92.4 mph with below average extension. Enns does get pretty good riding action on it, and despite the mediocre gas powering it, he collected quite a lot of whiffs with the Mud Hens so far this year.
His cutter and changeup basically split duties as his second most used pitch, while he’ll occasionally mix in a curveball as a change of pace. The cutter is essentially a slider at 83-84 mph. It’s a solid whiff generator, but Enns best pitch is his changeup. He gets 10 mph of velocity separation from his fastball and racked up a whiff rate just shy of 40 percent with it for the Mud Hens. While it’s mainly for use against right-handers he will throw it left on left occasionally too.
Enns will need a 40-man roster spot, but we’ll have to wait to see the corresponding move.
We don’t expect him to be up with the major league club for very long, but Enns is pitching well and should be able to give the Tigers a decent outing against Athletics lefty, Jeffrey Springs.
Dietrich Enns will join the #Tigers for Thursday’s game, per sources.
Enns is a 34-year-old left-hander from Triple-A Toledo. He posted a 2.89 ERA, 15 walks, 71 strikeouts across 62.1 innings in 14 starts for the Mud Hens.
It’ll be his first MLB game since 2021 with the Rays.
— Evan Petzold (@EvanPetzold) June 24, 2025
Tigers to play Go
In other news, the Tigers also signed right-handed reliever Woo-Suk Go on a minor league contract on Tuesday. The 26-year-old was released by the Miami Marlins on June 17. Go has some closing experience but has battled some intermittent command issues in recent years which has eaten into his strikeout rates as well as his overall results.
The right-hander averages 93-95 mph with a riding fourseam fastball. It’s a pretty average pitch, but Go has a good splitter that draws most of his whiffs. We’ll see if the Tigers can get his delivery sorted out. Go doesn’t profile as a true high leverage guy even if his command does get tightened back up, but the Tigers must see something they believe they can work with.