Fun-loving Willis plans to revive career with Tigers

Dontrelle Willis is looking to bounce back from a disappointing 15-loss season.

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LAKELAND, Fla. -- Dontrelle Willis, looking as frantic and funky as ever astride the pitcher's mound, pumps another fastball into the catcher's mitt. The glove cracks with approval. His new teammates, standing around the batting cage, offer a few grunts of agreement.

The Tigers' new left-hander winds up again, his right knee brushing amazingly close to his chin, his right foot kicking out, his eyes peering over his turned shoulder, boring in toward home plate. His arm whips forward. Another fastball. Another crack. "All right, all right," says Willis, nodding his head, readying himself for the next pitch.

This is the start of the newest phase of Willis' baseball life, and from here -- a cool morning on a back field at the team's central Florida training complex, pitching to batters for the first time this spring -- everything looks great. The windup's the same. The slinging delivery. The competitiveness. The big smile is still there. The talk. The goofing around with the teammates. It's all the same.

But for Willis, the likeable starting pitcher who dragged the Marlins through one of the most unlikely World Series titles ever as a rookie in 2003, and who won 22 games a couple years later, changes are on their way, and they're as stark as the National League vs. the American League. At 26 years old, with 162 career starts already on his card, Willis has moved up to the big time. Life on the mound is about to get a lot harder.

As if he cares.

"I don't really think about it. I don't think about it all," says Willis, his leg pumping furiously as he sits for an interview, sipping an orange soda after the workout. "I just got to worry about myself and my teammates and figure out the style of baseball they like to play. That's the only thing I'm concerned about as far as the adjustments. Like any athlete, I make the adjustments accordingly, you know what I mean? So I'm just going to go out there and try to have fun like I did in the National League."

Willis was part of maybe the biggest trade of the offseason. He and Florida teammate Miguel Cabrera, one of the best young hitters in baseball, came to Detroit in an eight-player mega-swap, instantly transforming the Tigers from a good team into what many view as a great one. Cabrera, a third baseman, was clearly the centerpiece of the trade.

But Willis, 68-54 in his career with a 3.78 ERA, is no mere throw-in. He'll fit somewhere into the middle of a deep Detroit rotation as the Tigers try to unseat the Indians in the AL Central.

The Tigers are not perfect, by anyone's estimation. There are questions about their middle relief. Some wonder about Cabrera's defense at third, though the man that traded for him, general manager Dave Dombrowski, insists that he has all the tools that a good third baseman needs. And an ability to pound the ball, of course, that makes his defense a little less important.

There are questions, too, about Willis and how he will adapt to the deeper lineups in the AL. And about how he will pitch after the worst season of his young career. Willis was 10-15 with a 5.17 ERA for the Marlins in 2007.

"I remember when I got here. In the beginning, you weren't used to the pitchers, or the hitters," says Detroit's Ivan Rodriguez, the catcher on the Marlins' '03 championship team, now going into his fifth season with the Tigers. "But he'll be fine. A couple, three weeks. A month. And then it's the same. Baseball is the same."

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