The purpose of this post is to challenge the conventional wisdom. Right now everyone is pessimistic, right? After all, we all got burned last year. I remember driving to the post office sometime in February and wondering if the Tigers had assembled the best lineup of all time. Then the same team that was supposed to win the World Series finished in last place.

So now the Tigers are bums. And because of last year, obviously there’s plenty of justification for pessimism. But the question here is, isn’t it also plausible that the Tigers could re-emerge as World Series contenders in 2009?

Looking back, the 2008 Tigers had some serious structural flaws. I’m defining a structural flaw as something that could reasonably be expected to go wrong. Two of the flaws were with the hitters: the Tigers were weak defensively and their abundance of slow power hitters made them prone to cold streaks at the plate. The other flaw law with the bullpen, which had too many question marks (namely the injuries and control problems of Joel Zumaya and Fernando Rodney) combined with a sketchy backup plan (namely Francisco Cruceta, an unproven reliever who missed a large chunk of Spring Training with visa issues).

The structural flaws turned into catastrophic problems: the Tigers played terrible defense; the lineup surrendered way too many shutout losses; the bullpen was terrible.

But the biggest problem, the team’s starting pitching, wasn’t flawed on paper, just in hindsight. Neither we nor Dave Dombrowksi could reasonably have expected that all five projected starters — Justin Verlander, Jeremy Bonderman, Dontrelle Willis, Nate Robertson, Kenny Rogers — would have disastrous seasons.

Okay, fast forward to this offseason. The roster is more or less intact, but the Tigers have also addressed their flaws.