On Joel Zumaya’s 14th pitch of the night, he threw a 99mph fastball that Delmon Young fouled off. Zumaya however ended up in a crumpled heap behind the mound. His arm was twitching and his face was a mix of excruciating pain and terror. We’ve seen Zumaya improbably bounce back from a variety of injuries, but with each successive one you can’t help but fear that he’s thrown his last pitch.

A preliminary diagnosis will likely be available shortly, as will a roster move. I’ll update things here as we know more. Ryan Perry has only made one rehab appearance for Toledo. Robbie Weinhardt made his 3rd rehab appearance in Connecticut tonight. Daniel Schlereth has been erratic with 14 K’s and 8 BB’s in his last 10 innings. Casey Fien and Jay Sborz may also be in the mix.

UPDATE: Well, not really an update. Zumaya will get an MRI in the morning and Jim Leyland isn’t speculating on the injury.

UPDATE 2: Zumaya has officially been placed on the DL with a vaguely defined elbow injury (MRI results still pending I suppose). Casey Fien gets the call and will be added to the 40 man roster.

UPDATE Ourch: It is a fractured olecranon. Bend your arm and feel the bony part of your elbow, aka the funny bone. That’s the olecranon. The fracture is nondisplaced and the internet says that a nondisplaced fracture isn’t necessarily treated with surgery. Usually it is fractured due to a blow though and not soft tissue ripping it off.

When your team turns to an emergency starter and you get a win, the aesthetics of such a win become irrelevant. Which is fortunate because this wasn’t exactly a pretty victory.

With Dontrelle Willis battling a stomach virus the Tigers turned to Brad Thomas to try and eat some innings. Thomas wasn’t good the first two innings. He either missed the strike zone or got hammered. Even factoring in an Austin Jackson misplay, you had the feeling that the Rangers should have scored more than 4 runs in the first 2 innings. But Thomas did manage to come out for a quick and painless 3rd inning.

The Tigers then got frisky in the 3rd and 4th innings. They strung together 3 hits, an RBI ground out to get the game within 1 run in the 3rd.

In the 4th inning it was Tigers patience and a screwy wild pitch that gave the Tigers the lead. Ramon Santiago scored from second on a pitch that went through Taylor Teagarden’s 5-hole.* That was enough for the lead, but the Tigers added some more runs as they batted around.

*Does anybody else remember another game in Texas where Nook Logan scored from first base on a wild pitch?

Bullpen Dominance

The story of this game though is probably the bullpen. Eddie Bonine followed Thomas and allowed just 2 baserunners in 3 innings while getting 9 ground ball outs. Bonine threw his knuckler 7 times, all for strikes and 2 resulted in ground outs.
Joel Zumaya was next and recorded 5 of his 6 outs with strike outs. Jose Valverde handled the 9th inning allowing just an infield single.

The final line for the pen was 6 innings, 3 singles, 1 walk, and 5 K’s.

Because Bonine and Zumaya in particular were able to chew up 5 innings, it means that the rest of the pen is available tomorrow.

• The bullpen would have had one more hit surrendered were it not for a spectacular leaping grab by Jackson. It may be his best catch of the season.
• Jackson did keep his strikeout streak alive. It’ll end some day.
• I liked seeing the Tigers taking advantage of the defense and picking up 2 bunt hits. I hate the sacrifice, but love seeing a guy drop one down when the 3rd baseman is playing deep.
• Adam Everett left the game with a hamstring strain.
• Scott Sizemore didn’t play due to ankle soreness.
• Johnny Damon’s hit streak extends to 11 and he reached base 4 times.

The Tigers finally got to a starting pitcher early. Unfortunately Detroit’s starting pitcher wasn’t on his game. Fortunately the Tigers bullpen earned a cumulative save getting the last 12 outs.

The Detroit lineup had no trouble getting to Joe Saunders. They hit, they moved people over, the bunted, the sacrifice flied, and they scored in the first 3 innings. When Adam Everett hit the flyball to left to plate a run it was the first 2nd inning run Detroit has scored this season.

On the other side Justin Verlander had significant issues controlling his offspeed pitches leading to all sorts of trouble. Mostly in the form of rapid pitch count escalation. The irony is that Verlander often becomes fastball happy when in trouble. Yet when the other pitches weren’t working for him against the Angels, he stayed away from the heater. Only 17 of his first 35 pitches were fastballs.

Credit needs to go to the Angels also who fouled off 35 pitches for the night.

Joel Zumaya, Phil Coke, Ryan Perry, and Jose Valverde did a terrific job locking down the game once Verlander was lifted. Seeing Zumaya come out for two innings the night after throwing 33 pitches makes me nervous given his history, but he did fine. As a group they allowed 5 baserunners and fanned 5 in 4 innings.

The bigger news in all this though is probably the injury to Carlos Guillen. Guillen’s hamstring popped as he was coming around to score (pictured above) and couldn’t make it to home plate. Guillen is hitting the disabled list, which is an unfortunate annual tradition.

• The Tigers didn’t strikeout until Gerald Laird fanned with 2 outs in the 7th inning.
• It looked like Austin Jackson’s strike out streak may end, but he went down swinging in his 4th at-bat.
• Miguel Cabrera doubled in his 5th straight game. The last Tiger to do it was Frank Catalanotto in 1999.

Yesterday Jim Leyland dropped some hints as to what his preferred 25 man roster would be when the team breaks camp this week. Actually he’s been dropping hints all along but he certainly helped to remove some doubt yesterday. It appears that Don Kelly will be the last position player on the roster.

Leyland offered reporters up this nugget:

I’ll give you one hint: ‘If Larish could play center field, his chances would be better.’

Which certainly hurts Jeff Larish’s chances of making the team. And I read it like Lee does that the preferred candidate be able to play both infield and outfield. This likely becomes more important as Leyland states his intention of resting Brandon Inge early in the season and the team’s questioned (and answered) level of comfort in Scott Sizemore.

Dave Dombrowski has input (or final say) into the roster as well, but a Kelly selection wouldn’t raise any contractual red flags. Clete Thomas has an option left and Jeff Larish isn’t on the 40 man roster (though Kelly would have to be removed if he is cut and Larish would slide into that spot). Kelly is out of options and the team would risk losing him.

At this point it is much ado about the 25th spot, a spot that will likely have many inhabitants as the season progresses. Thomas, Larish, and a host of others will likely spend time on the big league roster this season. But in March it’s something to talk about at least.

In other roster-ish news Joel Zumaya appears to have secured a role in the bullpen.

Photo Credit: lakelandlocal on Flickr

With the deals for LaTroy Hawkins and Brandon Lyon it appears that the market for “back end of the bullpen pitchers who could potentially set-up or close” may be getting steep for the Tigers. And with that the club may turn to in house options.

Jason Beck spoke with Dave Dombrowski who said that a return of Fernando Rodney is unlikely calling it a “long shot.” More frightening though is that the team is viewing Joel Zumaya as a legitimate option for the closer role.

I’m on board with not sinking a lot of money into a bullpen. I think the Tigers have done a good job the last few years of mixing young guys, minor league free agents, and fringy closer material guys together the last few years. It’s a quantity over quality approach where you hope enough guys make it work each year.

But going into a season with Zumaya competing for the role of closer is a ridiculous gamble and yet another reason to question the clubs intention to compete in 2010. In 2006 Zumaya was incredible. He hasn’t been healthy or effective since then. The velocity is certainly still there, but the results haven’t been for too long to “count on him.”

Ryan Perry and the newly acquired Daniel Schlereth would like be competing for such a role as well so all the eggs aren’t in Zumaya’s incredibly fragile basket. Still, those other options are particularly assuring at this point in their career either.

Things have been very quiet here at DTW lately. While it wasn’t my intention for things to go dark here, when it’s a one person gig sometimes life gets in the way. Fortunately life will be out of the way this coming week so my winter meetings coverage should be pretty robust and very timely. In the mean time I’ll use this post as a way of catching up on everything that got neglected.

Polanco signs with the Phillies

The biggest new I failed to cover was the end of Placido Polanco’s career as a Tiger. This was a likely outcome after the Tigers declined to offer arbitration. With no draft pick attached the Phillies moved quickly and handed Polanco a 3 year, $18 million deal to play third base.

The deal was aggressive and it may have been an indication that the Phillies would have signed Polanco regardless of his arbitration situation. We’ll never know of course one way or the other. My guess though is that if the Phillies didn’t care about the pick, they probably could have signed him prior to the Tigers decision when there wouldn’t have been as much competition for his services. Beck has more on the negotiation and Tigers decision.

As for the deal itself, using WAR and Polanco’s past stats would indicate the Phillies got a steal just on the surface. Polanco has been at least a 3 WAR player the last 3 years which means he’s been worth about $12-14 million a season. But part of that value comes in the fact that Polanco played a premium position. He’ll lose some value moving to 3rd base. He’ll also age. He’s also playing a position he hasn’t played regularly since he was a Phillie last time around. I think Polanco will look like a bargain this year, but look pretty expensive at the end of the contract.

Brian Peterson & Cale Iorg interviews

Mark Anderson at TigsTown has been busy. Over the last week he’s conducted interviews with Cale Iorg and Brian Peterson. Everybody knows Iorg as the Tigers shortstop prospect where there has been a huge disagreement between tools and results. Iorg does seem to be a pretty sharp guy though who has dealt with the adversity well and isn’t afraid of hard work. When Anderson asked about his offseason Iorg’s response was:

I want to work out a lot, to try to get stronger and stuff. I just want to do a lot of hitting stuff. I can obviously work with my Dad. My Dad knows my swing better than anybody out there, so work with him and just really try to get my work in – get good work in. It’s not all about how many times I go, or how many swings I get when I get there; it’s just being consistent with what I do when I’m there. My whole off-season is to prepare for spring training. Whether I go to big league camp again, I don’t know yet, but if I do, then I want to be prepared to play like people have said I can play.

Now not as many people may know about Peterson. He is the organization’s Performance Enhancement Instructor and in his role he helps players with the mental side of the game. He’s been with the organization for seven years and he held a similar role with Dave Dombrowski’s Marlins teams as well. It appears that Dombrowski was an early mover in seeing the value in a role like this:

I think Dave has been very progressive. Theforiginal guy that started doing this type of work was Harvey Dorfman who the A’s used in the early 80’s. Dave Dombrowski hired Harvey with the Marlins in 1992 when we first started the Marlins organization. Dave has been really progressive in this area. He really believes in it and he knows that it helps players. I think he is one of the guys at the forefront in seeing that this type of position can really help the players.

Other stuff

• Joel Zumaya’s rehab is complete and he should be ready to go for spring training
• Danny Knobler wrote a really well reasoned analysis of the Tiger situation
• Jonathan Mayo took a look at the Tigers 2009 draft
• Lee Panas previews the winter meetings from the Tigers perspective
• Ernie Harwell makes a public appearance and steals the show

The Tigers made a handful of roster moves today to prepare for the offseason. They are:

• Mike Hollimon was outrighted to Toledo
• Marcus Thames and Matt Treanor have been removed from the roster and are now free agents
• Jeff Larish and Joel Zumaya have been reinstated from the disabled list
• Jay Sborz had his contract purchased from Toledo

Thoughts

The Hollimon move isn’t surprising. He very may well still have a role in the organization. He has a 260/361/478 line in his minor league career which is solid for a middle infielder. He’s also 27 and has been injured much of the last 2 seasons meaning that he wasn’t going to get claimed.

The Matt Treanor announcement isn’t surprising either. Treanor will unfortunately finish his Tigers career without a hit but he does have the distinction of catching Rick Porcello’s debut.

Jay Sborz was eligible to become a minor league free agent and the Tigers evidently think he is close enough to helping to keep him in the fold. The second round pick in the 2003 draft struggled mightily his first 3 years in the organization but has progressed nicely since 2007 and he fanned 10.4 batters per 9 innings working out of the Erie bullpen in 2009.

That brings us to Marcus Thames. As an analyst I have to say letting Thames go is clearly the right move. He is limited defensively and his batting line as a 4th outfielder/DH was acceptable when he was making much less. For the Tigers to bring him back likely would have meant a $3 million investment. With younger players like Casper Wells, Clete Thomas, and Wilkin Ramirez likely to push for back up outfielder roles and Carlos Guillen and Magglio Ordonez sharing time at DH, there wasn’t a place for Thames. I thought the Tigers would hold on to him until closer to the tender deadline and perhaps include him as part of a trade, but there must have been little interest on that front.

That said, the fan in me is very sad to see Thames go. The homers were spectacular and surprisingly clutch. He was always on the outside looking in when it came to playing time but he never publicly complained and he always played his butt off. He’s also one of the few Tigers that I’ve had a chance to talk with on multiple occasions and he struck me as one of the genuinely nicest people you’ll meet. So I wish Thames all the best where ever he ends up.

Two injured Tigers pitchers are on the way back, and one is on the way back to Alabama.

Joel Zumaya

Zumaya started to feel pain again in his shoulder and with that comes a “diagnostic” trip to see Dr. James Andrews. There is a possibility that Zumaya will need surgery to clean up bone shards that is a part of last year’s stress fracture.

While I hope for the best for Zumaya, this story is probably a non-factor for the Tigers and their chances this year. If Zumaya can come back that’s great, but it shouldn’t even factor into the Tigers plans one way or the other.

Jeremy Bonderman

Rod and Mario mentioned during the telecast that Bonderman was set to pitch a simulated game prior to the Indians game on Friday. Bonderman is supposedly feeling great and Dave Dombrowski has said that a bullpen role could be in Bonderman’s future. With Porcello’s recent struggles and the uncertainty around what Luke French can contribute down the stretch, I have to think the Tigers need to at least explore Bondo starting down the stretch.

Nate Robertson

Robertson, like Bonderman will throw a simulated game before the weekend. Robertson is recovering from a procedure to clean out his elbow. I have no idea if it would be a successful endeavor, but the Tigers should look at an extended rehab session for Robertson to stretch him out as well.

Fu-Te Ni and Bobby Seay have made a nice left-handed tandem out of the pen and I can’t see Robertson dislodging either one of them at the moment. The mission to make him a starter does a)buys the team more time with him in the minors and b) if he pitches well it’s another potential starting option.

On Tuesday night Joel Zumaya threw a ball that the Comerica Park gun, and the Fox Sports gun clocked at 104mph. That is freakishly fast and a little hard to believe, at the very least there was probably some rounding up. A check of MLB.com’s pitch f/x data had the pitch 50 feet from home plate at 102.2mph. So the stadium gun was likely a little hot, but that is still obscene. It did make me curious about the fastest pitches thrown this season.

By my check the pitch f/x system has recorded 91 pitches that topped 100mph this season (through 6/25/09). Of those 91 pitches, they basically all belong to Zumaya.

If you order the pitches in descending order, Zumaya actually has the 38 fastest pitches this season (Justin Verlander had the 39th) and 57 of the 58 fastest. Zumaya has 28 pitches at 101mph or faster.

As for the fastest pitch this season? It wasn’t the pitch that finished Bradley which came in a 102.2. But it did come earlier in the at-bat when Zumaya hit 102.7. For good measure he came back the next day and hit 102.6 against Mike Fontenot. Those are the 3 pitches this season top the 102mph barrier.

This doesn’t come as a surprise at all because a)we knew that Joel Zumaya was coming back and b)Bonine hasn’t pitched well and he’s the candidate with options. Really, the only question now is how does Zumaya fit into the bullpen? Ryan Perry and Bobby Seay have combined to be the primary set-up men. Does Zumaya bump one (probably Perry the other right hander) or does he just get mixed in?

The other question is does Bonine head down to be a starter or does he continue to work from the pen?

Eddie Bonine demoted to make room for Joel Zumaya | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Indianapolis 13 Toledo 10
Joel Zumaya is probably one outing away from rejoining the team. He pitched a scoreless inning fanning 2. Scott Drucker was shelled for 7 runs allowing 9 baserunners in 4.1 innings. Fu Te Ni didn’t fare better with 4 runs on 5 hits and a walk in 2.2 innings. Mike Hessman hit a grand slam and Dusty Ryan hit a 3 run homer. Brent Dlugach had 3 hits and Clete Thomas and Ryan Robertson added 2 apiece.

Erie – suspended in the 3rd inning

Willis pitches against Clearwater - cr Roger DeWitt

Clearwater 4 Lakeland 0
Dontrelle Willis went 7 innings, which by itself should tell you something. He allowed 4 runs on 8 hits with 2 K’s and no walks. He was perfect through the first 3 innings and recorded 16 ground ball outs. Michael Bertram went 2 for 2 with 2 walks.

West Michigan 5 Fort Wayne 2
Brandon Douglas was a homer short of the cycle. Jordan Newton added 2 hits. Casey Crosby pitched a no hitter for 3 innings, but he walked 6 in that time, but he also fanned 5.

Joel Zumaya made 2 rehab appearances for Lakeland, and had a tough time with the strike zone (2.1 innings, 5 walks). However, today he went 2 innings and allowed 2 hits but no walks with 1 strikeout. He had a decent ratio with 17 of his 26 pitches resulting in strikes.

Toledo vs. Columbus – April 18, 2009 | MLB.com: Gameday

Joel Zumaya is taking his rehab up I-75 to Toledo and Dontrelle Willis will join up with Lakeland next week.

Zumaya hasn’t been particularly effective or accurate in his 2 appearances in Lakeland, and I’m a little surprised he’s moving up so soon. I thought they would have at least wanted him to throw on back to back days.

Willis hasn’t been anywhere on the field, but he’ll take those first potential steps back on Tuesday.

Zumaya and Willis taking next steps in rehab | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Toledo 5 Indianapolis 4
Ryan Roberson doubled and walked. Mike Hessman added two walks and Clete Thomas tripled. Ron Chiavacci allowed 2 runs on hits and 3 walks while fanning 3 in 5 innings.

Altoona 1 Erie 2
Scott Sizemore had two hits. Ryan Strieby had two hits and a walk. Brooks Brown pitched 5 shut out innings allowing 4 hits and 2 walks while striking out 3. Cody Satterwhite allowed a hit and a walk but K’d two for the save.

Tampa 3 Lakeland 5
Joel Zumaya made a rehab appearance and struggled a little allowing 2 runs on a hit and two walks with 1 strikeout in 1 inning. He started the game, so that was a little unusual for him. Brett Jacobson pitched a scoreless inning. Charlie Furbush fanned 6 and walked none in 4 shutout innings. Shawn Roof was 3 for 5. Chris Carlson homered and singled. Audy Ciriaco had 2 hits.

South Bend 0 West Michigan 5
Brandon Douglass went 3 for 4. Billy Nowlin and Luis Palacios doubled and singled. Mauricio Robles allowed just 2 hits and 1 walk while fanning 8 in 5 innings. Matt Hoffman pitched the other 4 innings and allowed 2 the same while K’ing 3.

The Tigers announced three more roster moves today. Not surprisingly Joel Zumaya will start the season on the DL as he tries to overcome his shoulder maladies. A little more surprising is that Dontrelle Willis will be joining him. The official reason is “anxiety disorder.”

Clearly the team thinks that Dontrelle’s problem is mental which presumably means they still believe in his pitching ability. He worked with a performance coach during his Lakeland sabbatical last season, but the problems seem to be recurring. The reports are glowing when he pitches in camp or minor league games, but the results aren’t appearing in regular exhibition events.

This seemingly means that Willis can stay on the DL indefinitely. The trick is that there are limits to rehab assignments. So while he can be on the DL to work through these issues, he has limited time to demonstrate a recovery.

This is a very sad story for Willis and I wish him the best.

The third and least notable move is Kyle Bloom was returned to the Pittsburgh Pirates. That leaves 35 players in camp.