Al Central: Detroit Tigers

The 1998 tigers come with a guarantee. They promise to strike out fewer times than they did last year, to score more runs and to win more games—or to the trying. They are new and improved again. They're not saying they will improve by 26 games, as they did last year in finishing 79-83. But if all they do is win half their games, they will not be satisfied. "I think we can push Cleveland," Randy Smith, the Detroit general manager, says—and he means it. Welcome back to baseball, men.

To be part of the race, the Tigers will need help from within and from the outside, too. But if the Indians continue to lose pitchers on a biweekly basis, if the White Sox don't come out of their coma and if Detroit's young starters pitch competently (and if lefty Justin Thompson continues to throw spectacularly), it is not absurd to say the club can contend in the American League Central. That's what the Tigers think. It's not that they're cocky. What they are is ambitious.

In other words, they take after their owner, Mike Ilitch. Ilitch played in the Detroit farm system for four years in the 1950s. One day he called up a team executive, John McHale, and announced his availability for the big club. Thanks, kid, McHale told him, we'll call you if we need you. Ilitch didn't have major league skills, just major league ambition. When he got out of baseball he got into pizza, starting a chain called Little Caesars that made him rich.

In 1982 he bought the Detroit Red Wings, and 10 years later he bought the Tigers. He's a baseball owner who played the game professionally, and it shows. He wants players who remind him of himself as a player: fast, defensively sound, overachieving, passionate.

It has taken time, but Ilitch has also surrounded himself with some of the ablest people in baseball. The club president is John McHale's son, John Jr., who oversaw the construction of Coors Field and is now doing the same for Tiger Ballpark, which should open in 2000. The general manager is another second-generation baseball man, Randy Smith, son of Astros president Tal Smith and the guy who oversaw the turnaround of the Padres in 1994 and '95. Best of all, the manager is Buddy Bell, whose father, Gus, was a National League outfielder for 15 years and who himself had a distinguished 18-year career as a major league third baseman before retiring in '89. The players like and respect Bell.

The bosses are modeling the team makeover on what Cleveland did in the early 1990s. They want the club to be really good just as they move into their cozy new ballpark with the funky, uneven outfield wall. With the money from increased attendance, they would pump up the payroll and continue to improve the team. But if they goof, if the team turns out to be decent this year and very good next year, well, that wouldn't be so awful, would it?

In drawing up their grand plan, the Tigers made one critical decision to distinguish themselves from the Indians and from their own brawny history. They are looking to become a pitching, speed and defense club, a National League club, an Ilitch club. Tiger Ballpark will be close to 400 feet in left center and 420 in dead center. A slugger at The Jake would have warning-track power at The Ballpark.

The Tigers are already reducing their power supply. The heart of the order might have three guys—Tony Clark, Bobby Higginson and Damion Easley—who can hit 90 homers combined, but if the rest of the lineup gets 60, that would be a lot.

At least there should be a better sense of the strike zone. Last year the Tigers were second to the Athletics in the American League in strikeouts, with 1,164. By bringing in DH Bip Roberts, leftfielder Luis Gonzalez and third baseman Joe Randa this year, to replace free-swingers like DH Bob Hamelin, rightfielder Melvin Nieves and third baseman Travis Fryman, Detroit expects to reduce its strikeouts by 10% or more. Converting strikeouts into batted balls should lead to more runs scored and more games won. That's the theory.

Of course Ilitch didn't get rich on a theory. He got rich selling pizza. The Tigers are not deluding themselves. They will return to prominence when they increase their payroll. They will increase their payroll when they improve their attendance. They will improve their attendance when they put a winner on the field.