Joel Zumaya will decide over the next few days on the future of his career, including whether to have Tommy John surgery.

The Twins have learned today that Joel Zumaya will miss the entire 2012 season with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.  In my opinion, this will be a significant blow to the Twins bullpen as management was counting on Zumaya to comeback and be a strikeout arm for late inning situations.  Zumaya was a low cost option with the Twins only guaranteeing $400,000 of the contract.  Zumaya is on the 40-man roster so the Twins will have to look at their options and make a decision as to who will replace Zumaya on the roster.

When speaking about the injury, Twins general manger Terry Ryan sounded disappointed that the situation didn’t work out as planned but also remained upbeat that this injury would not derail the 2012 season.  Ryan’s frustration in his initial response when hearing of the MRI exam could easily be felt.  “It’s not the news I wanted to hear on Sunday morning, I can tell you that,” Ryan said.  As he further spoke of the Zumaya injury, you could tell that he wasn’t going to let this wreck the season.”I took a risk,” Ryan said. “It was a high risk with high reward. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. And he feels bad, I feel bad. But we’re not going to let it define this club and the season.  Obviously we’re going to have injuries. This is one that I didn’t particularly want to see this early, obviously, because things were going fine. But it happened, and we’ve got to deal with it.”

Ryan went on to clarify that Zumaya will decide over the next few days on the future of his career and whether to have Tommy John surgery.  “That’s what we have to talk about tomorrow when he comes back,” Ryan said. “What’s he going to want to do with his future. We have areas where we’re protected, he has areas he’s protected by. If his career at this point comes to a halt, that’s one decision. If he wants to have Tommy John, that’s another. I’ll be interested to see what he decides.”  It was noted that Zumaya cleaned out most of his locker except for his glove.

The Twins were hoping Zumaya could find the magic he had his rookie season with the Tigers in 2006, when he had a 1.94 ERA and 97 strikeouts in 83 1/3 innings. The flamethrower has had five surgeries since then, including two on his elbow, two on his shoulder and one on his right middle finger.  The loss of Zumaya means other pitchers in camp have an opportunity to fill his expected role, including Alex Burnett, Jared Burton, Brian Duensing and Anthony Swarzak. Jason Bulger, Casey Fien, Jeff Gray, Matt Maloney, Lester Oliveros and Esmerling Vasquez are other pitchers who have been discussed, as well.  I would also not be surprised if Rule 5 draft pick Terry Doyle also gets an opportunity at a bullpen position as well.

Manager Ron Gardenhire hadn’t taken the next step in figuring out who would replace Zumaya, only to say he’s been able to see many pitchers working hard.  “I have no idea what it does for us, because I haven’t even gone that far,” Gardenhire said. “I didn’t plan. We planned on seeing how we got through this thing, and obviously we’re not going to get through it with him, so we’ll ad-lib from there.  “The only thing I do know is I feel for the kid. The kid’s a really good kid. You get to know people from the other side, and he looks like some monster out there pitching against you. 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.”