Salmon Sparks Angels but Thinks Nothing of It

Tim Salmon is hitting .250.

Five years ago, that would have been cause for concern. Five weeks ago, that would have been cause for celebration.

Today, it’s a nice little milestone on the comeback trail and a batting average higher than he had at any point last season. Salmon had three hits and drove in four runs to lead the rampaging Angels to a 9-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday.

Salmon often indicts himself on the charge of paralysis by analysis. After hitting home runs in consecutive games for the first time this season and extending his hitting streak to six games, Salmon declined to think about--or talk about--an explanation for his recent success.

“I’ve been too mental for a year now,” he said.

The Angels won their sixth consecutive game, with Salmon and Troy Glaus hitting home runs and Kevin Appier winning his fourth consecutive decision. They also won for the 15th time in 17 games, matching the best 17-game stretch in franchise history and closing within 41/2 games of the first-place Seattle Mariners in the American League West.

This is the same Angel outfit that lost 14 of its first 20 games, the worst start in club history. So relaxation is in order, but celebration is not.

“We were good about not panicking when things were going real bad at first,” Appier said. “It’s a lot different now. You feel a lot more confidence in here.

“It’s not cockiness. We’re not presumptuous. We don’t know we’re going to kick everybody’s butt. But we do have a lot more confidence.”

Salmon, 33, had plenty of confidence during the first eight seasons of his career, when excellence and consistency were his twin hallmarks. You could count on Salmon to hit .290 with 30 home runs, just as surely as you could count on Yankee fans to drown out Angel fans at Edison Field.

But Salmon limped to a .227 average and 17 home runs last season, both career lows, in a miserable season attributed largely to injuries. In the first 15 games this season, with no injuries to blame, he hit .135 with no home runs and three runs batted in.

Manager Mike Scioscia dropped him in the batting order but refused to bench him outright. Scioscia said Salmon’s strength and bat speed were much improved from last season and consistently reiterated his belief that he would come around.

“There were times when I was looking at him, thinking, why are you playing me?” Salmon said. “But that was me getting down on myself. That’s a negative attitude....

“I can appreciate some of the things he does to keep me motivated. When you’ve got a player you’re counting on and he’s not producing, I can understand the frustration. From that standpoint, I would say he’s hung in there with me. There are managers that would have put you in the doghouse.”

In his last 20 games, Salmon is hitting .338 with five homers and 21 RBIs.

He offered no analysis but did tip his cap to batting coach Mickey Hatcher, from whom never is heard a discouraging word.

“He’s the eternal optimist,” Salmon said. “He’s the guy that kept me going all last year. You can’t say enough about what that means to a player.

“When you’re not performing well, you’re beating yourself up. The fans are beating you up. The media is beating you up. To have the hitting coach pick you up, that’s big.”

For his part, Hatcher said he hadn’t done anything more significant than show Salmon two videos side-by-side--one with him hitting in 1997, the other with him hitting earlier this year. Salmon figured out he was holding his hands too high in the air.

“Once he got his hands lowered, his swing changed dramatically,” Hatcher said. “It was awesome to see.”

Appier has been awesome to see all season. The Angels staked him to a 5-0 lead Tuesday, and he held the Tigers to three hits over seven innings. In his last four starts, he is 3-0 with a 1.35 ERA.

Appier, 34, cannot survive on his fastball alone, not this far into a major league career that started in 1989. Some pitchers cannot adapt without a lively fastball, but Appier might be getting better.

“It seems like he’s inventing pitches out there,” Salmon said. “He’ll never throw the same pitch twice to a batter. Those kinds of days can screw up an offense.”