Zumaya shelved for another season

JON KRAWCZYNSKI,

AP Base­ball Writer

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — The fire­baller has flamed out once again, and this time it may be for good.

Min­nesota Twins re-liever Joel Zumaya was diag­nosed with a torn lig­a­ment in his right elbow on Sun­day, mean­ing his lat­est come­back bid has ended almost before it began.

Zumaya had signed an incentive-laden, one-year deal with the Twins, who hoped he could bol­ster their bullpen with his 100 mph heat. Gen­eral man­ager Terry Ryan knew Zumaya’s long injury his­tory when he offered the con­tract, but the pos­si­bil­ity of get­ting the over­pow­er­ing arm that elec­tri­fied the Tigers in 2006 intrigued him.

“I took a risk. It was a high risk with high reward,” Ryan said after the MRI exam revealed the torn ulnar col­lat­eral lig­a­ment. “Unfor­tu­nately it didn’t work. And he feels bad. I feel bad.”

Zumaya lasted just 13 pitches in his first ses­sion of live bat­ting prac­tice Sat­ur­day before walk­ing off the mound with pain in his elbow. Ryan spoke with him on Sun­day after they received the news, but said it was too early to talk about Zumaya’s plans for the future.

The 27-year-old could choose to have Tommy John surgery and start another exhaus­tive rehab pro­gram that could last a year or longer. Or he could choose to retire.

“He’s dis­traught, as you’d expect,” Ryan said of Zumaya, who was unavail­able for com­ment. “He’s going to come in here in the next day or so and we’re going to talk about the imme­di­ate future for him.”

Zumaya had not thrown a pitch since June 2010 after break­ing his elbow while pitch­ing for Detroit in a game at Tar­get Field. He has never been bet­ter than in his rookie sea­son with the Tigers, when he was a 21-year-old blast fur­nace who struck out 97 hit­ters in 83 1–3 innings and became one of the most feared setup men in the game.

Injuries to his wrist, fin­ger and shoul­der fol­lowed, lim­it­ing him to fewer than 40 innings in each of the next four sea­sons. Then his elbow snapped in 2010, a fright­en­ing scene that led some to won­der if his body could with­stand the sheer force of the pitches he uncorked.

But he had never torn the ulnar col­lat­eral lig­a­ment in his elbow, a com­mon and dev­as­tat­ing injury that usu­ally requires surgery and at least 12 months of rehab before a pitcher is ready to get back on the mound.

After a long and ardu­ous reha­bil­i­ta­tion of his bro­ken elbow, Zumaya worked out for sev­eral teams this win­ter. Look­ing for a right-hander at the back end of their bullpen to com­ple­ment left-handed setup man Glen Perkins and closer Matt Capps, the Twins offered him $850,000. The con­tract is only guar­an­teed for $400,000.

“It’s ironic that he tore this lig­a­ment because that was one of the area’s he was healthy,” Ryan said. “But when you have some­thing break, some­times other things go, too, and that’s the chance you take. And that’s the chance we took, I took. I’ll take full respon­si­bil­ity for the deci­sion, it just didn’t work. It’s as sim­ple as that.”

But Ryan said he didn’t regret the deci­sion to sign Zumaya.

“Some­times you have to take chances,” Ryan said. “It seemed like a worth­while chance.”

Zumaya had only been in the club­house for a cou­ple of weeks, but he’d already man­aged to make a strong impres­sion with the team. He pitched against the Twins for the Tigers and man­ager Ron Gar­den­hire said he quickly grew to like the heav­ily tat­tooed reliever who elec­tri­fied Detroit’s run to the World Series as a rookie in 2006.

“He looks like some mon­ster out there pitch­ing against you,” Gar­den­hire said. “But you get him in your club­house and you real­ize there’s spe­cial peo­ple and he’s a spe­cial per­son and it’s a really sad day for him and his fam­ily and our base­ball team, too, because we were all hop­ing this guy would be able to get back on this thing and make it through. Unfor­tu­nately it didn’t work out.”

Left-hander Fran­cisco Liri­ano was taken aback when he heard the news.

“Wow,” said Liri­ano, who had Tommy John surgery in 2006. “I feel bad for him. He’s been hurt prob­a­bly every year. Wow.”

Now the Twins have to look else­where among the 33 pitch­ers they brought to camp to help shore up their bullpen. Play­ers like Anthony Swarzak, Alex Bur­nett, Jared Bur­ton and Kyle Wal­drop could get looks, even though none of them have strong his­to­ries of late-inning relief roles.

“If I’m one of those guys down in that club­house, well, there’s some innings there to be had, I’d bet­ter go out there and get ‘em,” Ryan said. “You want to make the team? Let’s go.”

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Feb 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.