Tigers call up Jace Jung, Enmanuel De Jesus amid injury crunch

Detroit did not wait to see how bad the damage was before reaching for help. After Casey Mize left Tuesday night’s 5-2 loss to the Atlanta Braves with right groin tightness and Javier Báez exited with a right ankle injury, the Tigers promoted infielder Jace Jung and left-hander Enmanuel De Jesus from Triple-A Toledo to steady a roster suddenly stretched thin. Detroit was 15-15 and in first place in the AL Central when the moves hit, and the message was plain: this was both an injury patch and an audition.

Jung is the more familiar name, and the one with the bigger obligation to prove the front office right. The 25-year-old was Detroit’s first-round pick, taken 12th overall out of Texas Tech in the 2022 draft, and the organization has kept waiting for the bat to translate. He has already logged 21 big-league games, but the line has been rough, .106 with five hits and three RBI. The Toledo version, though, gave Detroit enough reason to look again. Jung hit .252 with 27 doubles, 17 home runs and 74 RBI in 110 games for the Mud Hens last season, production that looks a lot more like a corner-infield regular than a fill-in.

His return also matters because the Tigers had already pushed him back to Toledo on March 24, after spring training trimmed the roster. That makes this less of a ceremonial recall than a second chance in the middle of a compressed stretch, with Detroit still trying to figure out how Jung fits at third base in a timeshare that had not settled before the injuries hit.

De Jesus arrived under a different kind of pressure. The 29-year-old lefty, born in Valencia, Venezuela, signed a minor league deal with Detroit in December and was added to the 40-man roster on March 10 to keep him out of overseas reach after pitching in Korea. The Tigers had already looked at him in Grapefruit League games and in the World Baseball Classic, where he represented Venezuela, and they turned back to him again when the pitching depth started to fray.

Detroit had already moved Troy Melton to the 60-day injured list to clear a 40-man spot for De Jesus, a reminder that this was not a clean shuffle but another step in a bigger injury pileup that also includes Bailey Horn, Trey Sweeney, Parker Meadows and Reese Olson. For Jung and De Jesus, the opening is real. For Detroit, so is the urgency.