By Matt Pelc

J.V. addresses media while announcing his new contract

The Detroit Tigers got a bit of good news late last week when it was announced that ace Justin Verlander signed a five-year, $80 million deal to stay with the team through at least the 2014 season.

The Tigers started the off-season by choking down the stretch to fail to make the postseason and soon broke their fans hearts again by trading everyone’s favorite Tiger, Curtis Granderson and rising star Edwin Jackson. Because they got a lot of young guys in return for the duo, many fans, including yours truly, felt it was a salary dump and that the Tigers were resorting to the golden (shower) days of the 1990’s.

But a couple of moves since then have defied this and showed that Mike Illitch is still willing to spend on the Tigers and that perhaps the moves, including allowing Fernando Rodney, an aging Placido Polanco and Brandon Lyon to head out of town without a counter offer from Detroit, were just a part of pruning and restructuring the team rather than dumping salaries.

Valverde is the Tigers' new closer

The Tigers signed Jose Valverde to take the place of Rodney. While I always disagreed with the people who hated Rodney (yes he caused my blood pressure to soar as well, but he only had one blown save all of last year, something no other closer could stake claim to), I never saw him as a bona fide closer. He filled the gap between the retirement of Todd Jones and the Tigers holding out hope that Joel Zumaya would come back strong to be the stopper, which does not seem to be the case.

Valverde was described by a couple in the national media as the best closer on the market and the Tigers snatched him up.

Then they locked up their ace and kept him out of the greedy and lucrative hands of Boston, New Yorks and Los Angeles teams who would have all certainly driven his price well over $100 million.

Some complained that no one is worthy of $80 million per year to play a sport and yes that it is true, but it is the way sports are today so either accept it or stop watching sports. Others pointed to the foolish contracts to Jeremy Bonderman and Nate Robertson. The difference with those two being that Bonderman, and especially Robertson (which I feel was the Tigers worst contract since the Bobby Higginson fiasco), were never considering one of the top pitchers in baseball and a perennial Cy Young candidate.

Verlander is also the only pitcher in baseball history to throw for a no-hitter, start a World Series game and appear in an All-Star game all before the tender age of 30.

So as upset as I was following the season swoon and the Granderson deal, I am again looking forward to baseball. I am sure it is the whole “Hope Springs Eternal” mindset or perhaps it is my undying love for the team who wears the Olde English D which spanned through 100 loss season after 100 loss season, unlike many who jump on and off the bandwagon on a daily basis.

The AL Central is wide open and while I tend to lean towards the Minnesota Twins winning it again, I feel that any of the five teams (yes even the Kansas City Royals) could finish first and any of them could also as easily finish last, so the Tigers are as alive and well as anyone in the American League this season.

They do, however, need to add a bat. Johnny Damon would make sense with a one-year deal and he wants to be here and as we saw with J.V. it feels really good when someone wants to stick around your favorite team for awhile.

Email Matt

Posted 9:30 a.m.

Share on Facebook