Joel Zumaya was diagnosed today with a non-displaced stress fracture in his throwing shoulder. I guess that would explain some of the shoulder pain that shut Zumaya down for the last month.
Zumaya will be shut down from baseball activities for the next 6 to 8 weeks. While it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference for the fate of this year’s team, it will likely inhibit Zumaya partaking in any winter leagues. So less time to work on his slider, or perhaps be stretched out for a starters role.
I don’t know enough to know if this was a missed diagnosis, but combined with the Clete Thomas news, this hasn’t made for a favorable news cycle for Dr. Stephen Lemos and the DMC – the official team physicians.
I bet Dombrowski still thinks that Zumaya-Rodney-Jones is a 1-2-3 punch that can’t be beat.
Fire ’em all
The question I have is if he had been shut down or examined when he first came down with shoulder pain instead of the “every other day” nonsense, would this have been avoided? I’m seriously afraid of what else could happen to Dontrelle Willis.
What is the deal with the Tigers’ medical staff? Why are players playing with injuries like Zumaya, Bonderman (last season) and others? If this was a once in a great while occurrence I would promptly dismiss my skepticism of the medical and training staff, but this has happened rather too often the past couple seasons.
Good Lord. This really doesn’t help anyone (like me) who wants to beat the drum for Zumaya being transformed into a starter in 2009, stretching out in Toledo till the break or so, coming up earlier if disaster strikes. Joel just seems to be, how you say, injury-prone. This early in his career, too. Ouch.