Per the official Detroit Tigers Twitter account, Joel Zumaya will miss the remainder of the season with a non-displaced fracture in his elbow.
“Non-displaced” means that the bone has broken but the fragments remain in alignment. Due to the non-displaced nature of the injury, Zumaya may avoid surgery. According to Dr. Jonathan Cluett, recovery time is about 12 weeks. It remains to be seen if that recovery time is sufficient to return a flamethrowing reliever to full health. (more after the jump)

Even before the injury to Joel Zumaya, the Tiger bullpen, which deserves a large portion of the credit for how well the team has performed thus far, was likely to see some regression. They rank third in the American League in bullpen ERA, but Expected Fielding Independent Pitching, xFIP, ranks them in the bottom third. This is primarily due to their third-to-last strikeout to walk ratio, their league low home run per fly ball ratio, and third best batting average on balls in play (BABIP).
The xFIP calculation assumes (and rightly so) that if you walk too many hitters, and don’t [...]

Detroit 7, Minnesota 5 (box)
Jason Beck said it was the quietest he’s heard the Tigers clubhouse since game 163. Less than a month after Mario Impemba said he had never been so disappointed after a Tigers win (those remarks followed the final out of Armando Galarraga’s “perfect” game), the mood in the Tigers clubhouse was especially sour despite the fact that the Tigers had just beaten the Twins and claimed sole possession of first place.
But in winning the game, the Tigers lost one of their top relievers. A mere second after unleashing a 99 mph fastball, right hander Joel Zumaya [...]

Detroit 3, Minnesota 4 (box)
On a night when the Tigers lost their voice, they also lost a baseball game, though it hardly seems to matter.
Detroit got a good start from Dontrelle Willis and they managed 11 hits against Minnesota’s Nick Blackburn, but in the end, fell short.
The Twins jumped out to an early 2-0 lead when Willis struggled with control in the first. Like in previous start however, he was able to settle in and hold the Twins without another run until the sixth.
The Tigers got four consecutive hits to tie the score at 2-2 in the fourth, but wouldn’t [...]

Minnesota 0, Detroit 3 (box)
Carl Pavano got back to his usual dominance against the Tigers today at Comerica Park, but this time, it wasn’t good enough.
Pavano worked all eight innings for his club, needing just over 100 pitches to do so. He allowed just seven hits, he walked two and fanned five. The Tigers offense consisted of three rookies doing the damage against the right hander.
In his opposition, the Tigers got a throwback performance from lefthander Dontrelle Willis. Willis had perhaps his best start as a Tiger, tossing 6+ scoreless innings today. Willis kept the Twins off balance by mixing [...]

Detroit 5, Los Angeles 4 (box)
With a chance to salvage a series split before heading off to Texas, the Detroit Tigers turned to their ace right hander, Justin Verlander, against the Los Angeles Angels of Thursday night. While the final score will show the Verlander got the job done, the real victory in this game goes to his bullpen.
Verlander fell into the same rut that has plagued him in each of his first three starts this year. He struggled mightily in the first inning, facing eight batters and allowing two runs. Verlander, handed a 2-0 lead to start the game, [...]

Detroit 5, Los Angeles 6 (box)
Hey, at least the Wings won, right?
I’ll be honest here, at 6-0 Angels, I went to bed. So I can’t tell you exactly what happened that the Tigers got back into the game, only to fall short in their comeback attempt. I can tell you that if a few things had gone differently in the first half of the game, the last few innings might have turned out differently.
The Tigers had a chance to take an early lead when Ryan Raburn tripled with one out in the second, but Gerald Laird and Adam Everett couldn’t [...]

Kansas City 5, Detroit 6 (box)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one; The Detroit Tigers came from five runs down to win a ball game this afternoon against the Kansas City Royals. The win was the sixth of the year for Detroit and in five of those games, the Tigers have trailed by at least two runs. I’m starting to see a trend here.
Of course, it’s never a good idea to fall behind so often. As has been the case in a few games this year, the starting pitcher kind of put them in a hole. On a day when [...]