"Jim Leyland admits he has been part of the problem. He intends to be part of the solution, too.

"I hope I sign an extension shortly," said Leyland, who has one year left on his contract. "I don't know if that's going to happen or not. I want to manage a few more years, and I want to manage the Tigers.

"Is that going to happen? I have no idea. That will be up to somebody else. I have a contract for next year. I don't even know if I'm going to be here next year. We could all get fired. But do I want to manage? Yes. And I want to manage the Tigers."

Let's assume that Mike Ilitch wants Leyland back -- a safe bet. The question, then, is twofold:

1. Does Leyland want to manage these Tigers?

The Tigers spent $130 million on a powerful but slow team. Their pitching has been worse than expected, and their defense has not been good. I asked Leyland on Thursday if the Tigers should adjust their model to be more like the Twins, a low-payroll franchise that emphasizes control pitchers, defense and athleticism.

"I think our model is fine," Leyland said. "We just need it tweaked. We need to get (Joel) Zumaya back, we need to get (Jeremy) Bonderman back, we need to see what we've got in (Dontrelle) Willis, and I think we'll be pretty damn good. I think we'll be real good."

2. If he could manage these Tigers again, what would he do differently?

Leyland says that without Bonderman, a productive Willis or Zumaya or Todd Jones for long stretches, this was not the same team that had World Series hopes. True enough. But even with a depleted roster, this team underachieved. From Opening Day, the Tigers were never really in contention, and Leyland said their roster is still better than the team's 67-73 record.

"Well, yeah," he said. "We haven't played better, but we're better than that."

So what happened? The specific answers are easy: Justin Verlander and Nate Robertson and Gary Sheffield and several others have not performed well. But the general answer is tougher. Why have so many players from one team struggled?

"I think that we all did not handle the expectations very well," said Leyland, who points the finger at himself first.

From spring training, when Leyland warned reporters that this season was "a delicate thing," he tried to deal with the expectations. He told his players that high expectations were good. Don't the Yankees have high expectations? Don't the Red Sox?

"We kind of jumped back and went, 'Oh, wow. We've got all these expectations,' " Leyland said. "And all of a sudden, if you're not careful, you can start that, 'Oh, it's not me! It's not me! It's not me!'

"I thought I presented it the best way I knew how, to kind of lay that challenge out to them, to let them know what a good thing it was, and it just didn't work.""