The Detroit Tigers and slugger Prince Fielder have agreed to a nine-year, $214 million deal, a source told ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick.

CBSSports.com and Yahoo! each had earlier reported the deal between the Tigers and the free-agent first baseman.

Detroit boldly stepped up in the Fielder sweepstakes after the recent knee injury to star Victor Martinez. A week ago, the Tigers announced that the productive designated hitter could miss the entire season after tearing his left ACL during offseason conditioning.

Even though he never expected to re-sign Fielder, Milwaukee Brewers general manager Doug Melvin called his departure "somewhat of a sad day," in comments to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Melvin said the Brewers never made Fielder an offer once the team found out the terms that agent Scott Boras was seeking.

"Scott said from Day 1 it was going to be $200 million," Melvin told the newspaper. "When you hear those kinds of numbers, we couldn't get involved in that. All I can say is we had the feeling it was going to be very difficult to keep him."

The Tigers won their division by 15 games before losing in the American League Championship Series to Texas. Adding the 27-year-old Fielder gives the Tigers two of the game's premier sluggers, pairing him with Miguel Cabrera.

With Fielder now in the fold, general manager Dave Dombrowski and owner Mike Ilitch have a team that figures to enter the 2012 season as a favorite to repeat in the division -- with an eye on winning the franchise's first World Series since 1984.

"Everyone knew Mr. Ilitch and Mr. Dombrowski were going to make a move when Victor went down," outfielder Brennan Boesch said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "But I don't think anybody thought it would be this big."

Ace Justin Verlander chimed in on Twitter.

"Was on the golf course when I heard... Wasn't playing too well at the time. The prince news turned my day around!" Verlander tweeted.

The move also keeps Fielder's name in the Tigers' family. His father, Cecil, became a big league star when he returned to the majors from Japan and hit 51 home runs with Detroit in 1990. Cecil played with the Tigers into the 1996 season, and young Prince made a name for himself by hitting prodigious home runs in batting practice at Tiger Stadium.

A few years ago, when Prince returned to Detroit as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers, Tigers Hall of Famer Al Kaline recalled that power show.

"You can't ever say that you look at a kid that age and say that you know he's going to hit 40 or 50 home runs someday, but Prince was unbelievable," Kaline said then. "Here's a 12-year-old kid commonly hitting homers at a big league ballpark."

In an interview with MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM, Cecil Fielder said he was "shocked" by the news that Prince was heading to Detroit.