The Detroit Tigers made the biggest splash of the off-season, landing both Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, not to mention Jacque Jones and Edgar Renteria, but will it be enough to overtake the Cleveland Indians for AL Central supremacy?

Let’s start with one of the players mentioned above, left-hander Dontrelle Willis.  For a young pitcher like Willis, you’d think he’d do nothing but get better as his career goes on, but for the past 2 seasons, he’s done nothing but get worse.  In 2005, he finished with a 22-10 record, 7 complete games and a 2.63 ERA.  In 2006, his record fell to 12-12 with 4 complete games and a 3.87 ERA, not bad horrible though.  The falloff continued last season, finishing with a 10-15 record, no complete games and a career worst 5.07 ERA.  In an interview I did with ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick, he thinks Willis may get better with a good team and sold out stadiums night in and night out.  All do respect to a professional like Crasnick, I’m not sure I agree.  He goes from the NL East, not the strongest division in baseball, to arguably the best division in baseball in the AL Central.  He’ll face teams like the Cleveland Indians, Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox.  The Tigers will need him to be a whole lot better than his 5.07 ERA if they’re going to stay in front of Cleveland in 2008.

Willis will join another young starter in Justin Verlander in the Tigers rotation.  Verlander has shown consistancy in his numbers through the 2006 (17-9, 3.63 ERA) and 2007 (18-6, 3.66 ERA) seasons, even throwing his first no-hitter of his career last season at 24 years of age.  If Verlander continues to win 17,18 games per season, along with having the offensive power in the lineup to give him something to work with, he adds to the argument that this could be one of the best teams in baseball this season.

Edgar Renteria, I know a surprising pick for this article, brings much needed defense to the Tigers.  He comes off a career year in 2007 as far as batting average (.332) but had less than 500 at bats for only the 3rd time in his career (1996, 2001, 2007).  He can give the Tigers’ rotation confidence, knowing they have a solid defender behind them.  Renteria also brings a .331 batting average with runners in scoring position and .339 with runners on, not to mention hitting .290 with runners in scoring position and 2 outs.  If he can continue that trend, he’ll be giving Tiger pitchers plenty of runs to work with.

The one area that seemed to plague this team last season was their bullpen, that concern still exists going into 2008.  They’re not sure when they’ll get hard throwing right-hander Joel Zumaya as well as right-hander Fernando Rodney back from injury, not to mention having a soon to be 40 year old closer in Todd Jones.  Jones is the one player that the Tigers need to be their rock in the 9th inning, much more so than his 4.26 ERA in 2007, regardless of his 38 saves. 

Even though the Tigers have the offense that will put up runs, if their bullpen can’t be any better than 2007, it could be their undoing.

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