• Associated Press

May 27, 2025, 07:23 AM ET

CLEVELAND —

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    Cleveland selected Enright in the 20th round of the 2019 amateur draft out of Virginia Tech. The Miami Marlins took him in the Rule 5 draft two weeks before his cancer diagnosis in 2022.

    “There were some dark days, and that’s when I leaned on all those people around me,” Enright said. “The biggest thing was not letting cancer control me and not letting it dictate how I was going to live my life.”

    Enright returned to the Guardians organization in 2023. He missed most of last season due to a right shoulder strain, but went 2-1 with a 1.06 ERA in 16 appearances with Triple-A Columbus.

    He missed the first three weeks of this season due to a lat muscle injury. When Enright returned, he allowed only two earned runs in nine innings with one save in nine appearances with Columbus.

    Enright made the majors after a 17-11 record and 3.13 ERA in 156 minor league games, including two starts. He is wearing No. 59 with Cleveland, the same number worn by Carlos Carrasco for 12 seasons. Carrasco was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia in 2019 and returned to pitch for Cleveland later that season.

    Coincidentally, Enright’s big league debut came in Detroit when the Tigers were hosting Strikeout Cancer Weekend.

    “You can’t draw it up. It’s just one of those cool things,” manager Stephen Vogt said. “Just to see all that he’s persevered through different organizations, coming back to Cleveland and getting to make his major league debut with the Guardians. It was a really special day for Nic and his family and really fortunate we were there to watch it.”

    Enright said he has received plenty of text messages the past couple days, but one of the more meaningful ones came from Boston’s Liam Hendriks, who recently returned to the majors for the first time in two years after battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma and recovering from Tommy John surgery.

    Even though Enright has reached a couple of significant milestones, he doesn’t want his story to end with what happened Sunday.

    “I’m super happy with how [Sunday] went, but the goal isn’t to just debut,” Enright said. “The goal is to come up here, take the ball every time my name is called and do everything I can to help this team win games.”