Promoted to the Lakeland Tigers in the Mid-A Florida State League in 2004, where he went 3.54 with a 6-4 record in 94 innings of work, allowing 37 earned runs with 8 homers. A vacuum caused by promotions sucked him into Class-AA ball at just 19 years of age.

Zumaya may not have been ready for prime time quite at that point. With Erie he struggled, his ERA soaring to an eerie 6.30.

He regained his composure in 2005, though, starting with Erie and dominating, sending his ERA back to 2.77 en route to striking out 143, walking just 52, and giving up 8 dingers in 33 earned runs. This is the first year pro that Joel has pitched more than a 100 innings.

Promoted to Toledo on July 16th, his ERA has dropped to 2.65 with 43 Ks and one dinger in 10 earned runs.

Our scouts and touts tell us that he's been working on broadening his repertoire of pitches. Given his numbers with the tougher batters in the Triple-A, we think that whatever he's doing is working.

Zumaya is ranked at 34 because of several factors.  We see him probably entering the bullpen for the Tigers, rather than starting.  His style of pitching is effective, but it's also intense and draining. While he broke the century mark in innings this year, it's telling that he hadn't done it before, and we think, given his pitching proclivities, that he has the stamina of a middle reliever, and the arm sharpest as a potentially vicious closer. He wasn't ready to make the cup of coffee, let's see how you're doing call ups at the end of July. Our sources put him on the fast track, not the test track, at this time.

We think that Joel Zumaya has an excellent opportunity to make the Tigers' major league roster in the bullpen in 2006. If they have starter in mind for him, we think that he'll return to Toledo for another season of work to get ready for that larger vision of him.