DETROIT -- Jordan Zimmermann has been in this spot before, looking ahead to Spring Training with hopes of being healthy after a season he’d like to forget.

He has not been in this position of having this hanging over him going into a contract year.

“Every year’s big,” Zimmermann said last week during the Tigers Winter Caravan, “but you want to finish this year and the last year of the contract on a high note and give them something to be proud about.”

Zimmermann’s five-year, $110 million contract, one of the last remnants of the Tigers’ win-now push of the just-completed decade, is nearing its end. Once the contract is up next fall, Miguel Cabrera is poised to be the only Tiger under long-term contract. The team -- in turn -- will have a chance to go back on the market and pursue more than stopgap free agents with an eye towards building up the roster again.

Zimmermann is a consummate optimist. For every struggling start, even when he gets hit hard, he’ll say he’s an adjustment or a mechanical tweak away from getting back on track. But he’s also a realist about his current situation, and the likelihood of this being his last year as a Tiger.

“Obviously the last few years haven’t been good for me,” he said. “The plan is to give everything I’ve got and hopefully it’s a good year and I stay healthy.”

If he can stay healthy, he can live with the results. If he can stay healthy, the results should be better.

Zimmermann had a healthy Spring Training last year for the first time since his first camp as a Tiger in 2016. He started on Opening Day in Toronto and shut down the Blue Jays for seven innings, holding them hitless for the first six. He followed that up with 6 2/3 innings of one-run ball at Yankee Stadium. Both were no-decisions for him, but eventual victories for Detroit.

After two dominant starts to open the year, Zimmermann posted just three quality starts over his remaining 21 outings. He gave up five runs in each of his final four starts in April before landing on the injured list with a ulnar collateral ligament strain in his right elbow, costing him just under two months. He continued to be hit hard after his midseason return, whether it was off the fastball, slider or curveball.

Something had to change, so Zimmermann changed what he was throwing. And in a twist, in an era when pitchers have thrown fewer sinkers in favor of four-seam fastballs and breaking pitches to throw away from launch-angle swings, Zimmermann went against the trend.

“I’ve got that sinker that I was starting to throw halfway through the season last year,” Zimmermann said.

Zimmermann threw just three sinkers in the opening month of last season, and only one sinker over his three outings in June. He threw 46 in July, 85 in August and 97 in September, according to Statcast. By the season’s final month, he threw almost as many sinkers as four-seam fastballs, and more sinkers than any other pitch against left-handed hitters.

By the basic numbers, Zimmermann’s sinker accomplished its purpose. None of the 19 home runs he allowed came off the sinker. However, hitters seemed to adjust as the season wound down. The average launch angle off Zimmermann’s sinker was in negative numbers in July and August, meaning batters were hitting the ball on the ground. For September, that launch angle was 10 degrees, the same number hitters had against Zimmermann’s slider.

Not surprising, then, that opponents batted .421 (8-for-19) off Zimmermann’s sinker in September, with two doubles and a triple.

In the end, Zimmermann’s 6.91 ERA was the highest for a Major League pitcher in a season with at least 23 starts since Jose Lima posted a 6.99 ERA in 32 starts for the Royals in 2005.

Obviously, Zimmermann believes he can get better results. Unlike last year, when the sinker was a midseason project, he has an entire Spring Training coming up to work on his sinker and other pitches.

“I have the whole spring to be working on that,” he said, “and it’s going to be a good pitch for me to use if I can get the ball to move a little more than throwing a straight four-seam fastball.”

The key to making his repertoire work might well end up being his breaking pitches, specifically the curveball. It’s a pitch Zimmermann has had for years, and when he has had successful stretches, it has tended to be a reason for it. It wasn’t nearly as effective in 2019 (.337 batting average, .481 slugging percentage against) as it has been in some past years.

“When I’ve got the curveball and slider both working, those are the days when it’s easy to be out there,” he said. “But when you have one of them working and the other one’s not doing a whole lot that day, then it’s a lot more difficult. Hopefully I can get it all figured out where I can have confidence in throwing both of those pitches at any time.”

Zimmermann will likely get a chance to work on that mix without having to look over his shoulder, barring disaster. Though the Tigers will bring a bevy of starters to camp, including top prospects Casey Mize and Matt Manning, with a goal of competition across the roster, there’s little indication Zimmermann is at risk of being dropped so early.

“He’s just got to go out and figure it out,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “He’s a veteran. He knows how to pitch and all those things. As you get older, you lose a little bit on this and that, and you have to figure out how to pitch. He started doing that towards the end of last year. Staying healthy is really important for him.

“He’s a leader in this clubhouse. All the pitchers go to him. There’s a lot of different ways to help the ballclub out, and he does it in a lot of different ways. We’d like to see him have a great year. It’s his last year here. This guy’s been a horse for a long, long time, and he’s a classy guy. He’ll help us. We think he’s going to be fine.”