We already knew that Joel Zumaya was ready to rejoin the Detroit Tigers, and the team planned to call him up while they were in Kansas City this weekend. What we weren't quite sure of was who would get booted from the roster to make room for him. Well, maybe the obvious answer was always Eddie Bonine, but if there was any question about keeping him as the long reliever, his outing on Thursday night certainly confirmed those musings.
And so it became official after last night's game. Zumaya has been called up from Triple-A Toledo, and passes the Mud Hens baton to Bonine, who's back down to the minors.
We're veering into Tim Kurkjian "Is this a great game or what?" territory, but it's interesting that Zumaya rejoins the Tigers in the city where he hurt himself in the bullpen two years ago and started his long, slow descent into injury-plagued waters. (That strange bit of symmetry is not lost on him.) As we all know, it's been a rough ride for Glass Joel ever since then. But Zumaya says he's "100 percent" now, and he joins what could be a fearsome back end of the bullpen for the Tigers with Bobby Seay, Ryan Perry, and Fernando Rodney.
(Plus, this gives Jim Leyland a better option to pitch the eighth inning than he's truly had in recent games, as it's become apparent that Brandon Lyon can't really be trusted in high-leverage situations.)
Finally, may I point out that being one of the last Tigers blogs to post this news made it difficult to come up with an original headline? (The Daily Fungo beat me to what I was going to use.) And I'm not saying what I came up with was any good. What I am saying is that the Tigersosphere is fast on the draw.