High-Flying Angels Soar Even Higher : Baseball: A 13-3 rout of the Tigers puts them five games ahead in the AL West for the first time in nine years.

J.T. Snow doubled, singled and drove in four runs. Tim Salmon had three hits. So did Garret Anderson. Chili Davis singled twice. Tony Phillips homered. Brian Anderson pitched his first major league complete game and won his third in a row.

Oh yes, and Jim Edmonds homered twice and scored four runs in the Angels’ 13-3 rout of Detroit on Saturday at Anaheim Stadium. Can’t forget Edmonds.

And so it goes for the Angels, who are five games ahead of second-place Texas in the American League West. They haven’t been five games in front since the final day of their division-championship season of 1986.

Saturday’s victory was their 47th, equaling their total from the strike-shortened season of 1994.

They scored 10 runs or more for the 15th time this season and continued to lead the league in scoring. A year ago, they were the league’s lowest-scoring team.

Clearly, this is not the same club. An announced paid crowd of 28,429 enjoyed that fact greatly Saturday.

During spring training, Manager Marcel Lachemann said Edmonds was definitely not the kind of player who could hit 20 home runs in a season.

Turns out Lachemann was right. Edmonds, whose own preseason estimate ranged between 15 and 20, might hit 30. Or more.

A bases-empty homer to lead off the third inning and a two-run homer in the seventh pushed his total to 19, tops on the club.

The first one was a towering drive that barely cleared the left-center field fence. There wasn’t much doubt about the second one. It landed deep in the visitors’ bullpen, beyond the right-field fence.

“Am I surprised by his power?” Lachemann said. “Yeah. He’s hit some balls a long ways.”

Salmon recalled thinking over the winter that he hoped Edmonds would contribute more power to the Angels, who were again expected to be one of the weakest teams in the majors. Salmon knew Edmonds could do it. He’d seen it before in the minor leagues.

“I’ve know Jimmy since A-ball in 1988 when we were both at Palm Springs,” Salmon said. “He was kind of raw, but he could hit balls [far] like that. I’ve always known he had power, always known he had it in him.”

Edmonds traced his newfound success to a winter spent in the weight room and in a batting cage.

“It’s the first time in my life something paid off that fast,” said Edmonds, who had five homers in 94 games in his rookie season last year. “I think I told you guys I thought I was capable of hitting 15 or 20. And that was a good year.

“I’m not trying to hit them. They’re just coming.”

And leaving the park at a rapid pace.

On another night, Brian Anderson (4-2) might have pitched well enough to earn top billing in any account of Saturday’s game.

But Edmonds seized the spotlight, wrestling it away from even the hottest-hitting of his teammates.

The Angels’ five-run third inning helped ease Anderson’s burden, turning a 2-2 score into a more comfortable 7-2 advantage and soon enough into another laugher.

The Angels followed a similar method of operation in his last two starts, building big leads in easy victories over Toronto and Cleveland.

They reached their scoring average of six runs per game in the midst of their five-run third and kept rolling.

Detroit starter Sean Bergman lasted only long enough to give up six hits and six runs in two innings. Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson replaced him with Brian Bohanon after Snow’s run-scoring single.

The change didn’t matter much. The Angels hit Bohanon and another reliever, Mike Christopher, hard too. By game’s end, they had banged out 17 hits. Only second baseman Damion Easley, mired in a prolonged slump, failed to get a hit.

“They just beat our brains out,” Sparky Anderson said. “They’re right there with Cleveland.”

In the third, Garret Anderson greeted Bohanon with a hard-hit single that left fielder Juan Samuel failed to handle. The ball rolled to the fence, two runs scored and Anderson wound up at third base.

He scored on Gary DiSarcina’s double into the right-field corner.

The Angel lead grew to 8-2 after Snow doubled home Edmonds with two out in the fourth.