Baseball Preview - Tigers Look Like A.L. Champions - NYTimes.com Follow the blue and orange paw prints on the carpet to the far corner of the Detroit Tigers" clubhouse in Lakeland, Fla. They lead to the smoke-filled office of Manager Jim Leyland, whose desk, strewn with lineup cards and Marlboros, faces a five-foot-tall poster bearing the stern face of Ty Cobb. Cobb was the greatest Tiger of all, a genius in spikes - as it says on his plaque at Comerica Park in Detroit - but for all of his glory, he never played for a World Series winner. The Tigers won three pennants with Cobb but never took the championship. It is hard to do, after all. Leyland's new setup man, Octavio Dotel, wandered to 12 major league teams until he found one last season, St. Louis, that took him all the way. The Tigers" owner, Mike Ilitch, has dipped repeatedly into his fortune to splurge on free agents, without winning a baseball ring to match those from his Detroit Red Wings. Leyland has won it all, in 1997 with the Marlins, a team he could face in the World Series this October. Predicting a champion is wildly imperfect - how many of us thought Boston would win last year? - but these Tigers have that look. "We're not some old, crusty veteran team," Leyland, 67, said in his office one February morning. The manager might be crusty, but we're a young team. I'm glad people are fired up. The optimism stems largely from the $214 million Ilitch spent to sign first baseman Prince Fielder for the next nine years. Fielder more than makes up for the season-ending injury to Victor Martinez, who tore a knee ligament in January, and Fielder's presence sends another first baseman, the batting champion Miguel Cabrera, to third. Cabrera is a hulking figure - 6 feet 4 inches, 240 pounds - but he seemed to be in great shape this spring. And despite a bad-hop grounder that bloodied Cabrera's face in an exhibition game, Leyland says Cabrera can handle his new position. "Everybody's always looking for the perfect player," Leyland said. There's not very many. True enough, but in Cabrera and Fielder, Leyland has something close to the perfect middle of the order to run away with the American League Central, baseball's weakest division. Last season, Fielder teamed with another slugger, Ryan Braun, to lead the Milwaukee Brewers to 96 victories and the National League Central crown. Fielder starts the season at 27, Cabrera at 28. They are sophisticated hitters squarely in their prime, with sharp strike-zone judgment, solid rates of contact and prodigious power. "The swings themselves, the paths, it's pretty interesting," the Tigers" hitting coach, Lloyd McClendon, said. When I watch them, it's almost like I'm looking at a mirror. The Tigers can also pitch, with last season's A.L. Cy Young Award winner and most valuable player, Justin Verlander, atop the rotation. Max Scherzer, Doug Fister and Rick Porcello - none older than 28 - follow Verlander, and Dotel joins Phil Coke, Joaquin Benoit and Jose Valverde at the end of a strong bullpen. Detroit fell two games short of the World Series last October, becoming the second team in a row to bow to the Texas Rangers in a six-game A.L. Championship Series. The Yankees did it in 2010. The Rangers are loaded again, importing Yu Darvish from Japan to replace C. J. Wilson in the rotation, and signing Joe Nathan to take over as the closer. Neftali Feliz is moving to the rotation, and although he left one exhibition game early because of shoulder stiffness, his next start went well. Feliz's new role had been planned for a while, but his last one ended with a blown save in the potential World Series clincher last fall. In the fateful Game 6 in St. Louis, the Rangers stood one strike away from the title in the ninth inning and again in the 10th. The Cardinals stormed back both times, winning it in 11, and capturing the crown the next night. After also losing the World Series in 2010, to the San Francisco Giants, how do the Rangers evaluate last season? "I think the best way to put it is, if you don't win the World Series, there's disappointment in the end, but you can't look at it as a failure," said Michael Young, the veteran designated hitter. That's insane. I was very proud to be a part of that team. Having said that, there's still work to do, and for us that's a great challenge and we look forward to it. The challenge became tougher in December, when the Los Angeles Angels signed Wilson and, on the same day, the biggest free-agent prize: first baseman Albert Pujols, who swatted three home runs for the Cardinals in Game 3 at Rangers Ballpark.