Tyler Zuber said playing for a minor league team on Long Island helped him “recover his love for baseball.”
The Rays pitcher made his first major league appearance since 2021 in the sixth inning of Monday’s 9-1 loss to the Yankees in the Bronx.
Zuber missed all of the 2022 baseball season and most of the 2023 campaign due to shoulder impingement syndrome, and began this season with the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League.
As reported by Ryan Bass on Bally Sports, the 29-year-old right-hander said he felt he had rediscovered his love for baseball there.
“It’s a very poetic twist of baseball that Tyler Zuber is returning to the big leagues just a few miles from where he resurrected his career as a player for an independent team on Long Island,” Bass said in the broadcast. “He says he rediscovered his love for the game there. He really doesn’t know if he’ll have a chance to return to the big leagues.”
“He said the night he found out he was returning to the major leagues he cried because he didn’t know if that moment would ever come again.”
Zuber posted a 1.58 ERA in six games for the Ducks this season.
He pitched 5 2/3 innings for the Atlantic League team, allowing just five hits, striking out 10 and earning two saves.
The Rays bought out Zuber’s contract in May and he played for the team’s Triple-A affiliate in Durham, where he remained until being added to the major league roster after the All-Star break.
“We are excited to have Tyler back in the big leagues,” Ducks manager Lou Ford said in a press release Monday. “He did a great job for us earlier this year and is definitely deserving of this opportunity.”
Zuber, making his first major league appearance since Sept. 30, 2021, pitched 1 1/3 innings, allowing two hits and one run while striking out two.
