Can Detroit Tigers live up to expectations in 2012? – MLB News
The Detroit Tigers are facing high expectations this season, including hopes for a World Series title. Mike Ilitch’s team were outstanding in 2011 as they secured the American League Central title. However, they were unable to continue their impressive form in the playoffs to disappoint their supporters.
With Spring Training starting in a few days, Tigers’ general manager Dave Dombrowski has made several changes to team’s batting and pitching line-ups to achieve his desired results. However, many baseball writers and analysts believe that the Tigers will fail to execute their game plan similar to 2008.
"The difference is that, in 2008, we were an older team," said general manager Dave Dombrowski last week. "When you look around, this is a much younger team. We've got a lot of guys who should be approaching their primes."
The Tigers acquired Miguel Cabrera, Edgar Renteria and Jacque Jones before 2008 in an attempt to achieve a rare 1000 run season but they ended up with a poor 74-88 win-loss record. Although the Tigers struggled in almost all departments of the game, it was mainly the pitching that let them down during that season.
Dombrwoski's side had high hopes from Justin Verlander but he posted the worst season (11-17) of his career, which eventually led to team’s downfall in the competition. Other pitchers were also unable to live up to the expectations and the Tigers faced great amount of criticism from its fans following that season.
In batting department, Curtis Granderson suffered a serious injury to miss the first few weeks of 2008 season and Gary Sheffield was near to the end of his career. Tigers’ ERA of 4.90 was also quite poor and it played a big part in deciding the outcome of some crucial games.
However, the Tigers are looking to become stronger than ever before in 2012. Justin Verlander has grown into the Most Valuable Player and the pitching rotation is definately more powerful this season. With the addition of Prince Fielder, the batting unit is also looking pretty solid. Anyhow, it will be a huge challenge for the Tigers to turn the tables.
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