Salmon Off to a Grand Start With a Big Day Against A’s

Since Manager Terry Collins came to Anaheim in 1997 and began studying Tim Salmon’s career statistics, he has maintained that if the Angel right fielder could avoid his notoriously sluggish starts, he could put up Juan Gonzalez-type numbers, the kind of monster season that would make him a legitimate most-valuable-player candidate.

How’s this for scary: Salmon hit two homers, including a grand slam, and knocked in a career-high six runs in Thursday’s 12-1 victory over the Oakland Athletics before 7,148 in the Oakland Coliseum, and he’s now batting .395 with four homers, a league-leading 15 RBIs and an .816 slugging percentage after 10 games.

Mr. April, Salmon is not. He has a career .259 average--35 points below his lifetime .294 mark--in the first month of the season, and that’s the main reason he hasn’t made an All-Star game in six years. But if he were to continue this torrid pace, he would finish with 64 home runs and 243 RBIs.

OK, those projections are a little farfetched, but it’s quite clear that Salmon’s new approach to spring training, putting more of an emphasis on early Cactus League at-bats instead of “coasting through the first two weeks,” has paid huge dividends.

“I try not to think about it or get caught up in the numbers, but I’m aware of them,” Salmon said. “I’m sleeping a little better at night knowing I’m swinging the bat better. It’s a nice time for it to be happening.”

Indeed, with the exception of two Mo Vaughn at-bats in the opener, the Angels have played the season without Vaughn, Jim Edmonds and Gary DiSarcina. That has done little to slow an offense that has scored in double figures three times, banged out 18 hits Thursday and has a .306 average.

“With Mo and Jim out we needed someone to come through big, and he’s done it,” Collins said. “ . . . As long as Tim stays hot, we’re going to score some runs.”

And as long as Omar Olivares stays hot, the Angels will win games he starts. The right-hander came through with his second consecutive superb performance, limiting the A’s to one run--Jason Giambi’s seventh-inning homer--on four hits in seven innings, improving to 2-0.

Olivares, a sinkerball specialist who threw 7 1/3 shutout innings Saturday at Texas, walked one and struck out two, throwing first-pitch strikes to 13 of 24 batters. He worked quickly, keeping his defenders alert, and they backed him with three double plays. Of his 93 pitches, 60 were strikes.

“I kept being aggressive--even with a big lead, I tried to pitch like it was 0-0,” Olivares said. “When you fall into a rhythm, you feel like you can do anything, like you can throw the ball wherever you want. I had control on both corners, and it felt like their hitters were defensive, like they didn’t know what I was going to do.”

Some of the A’s weren’t all that impressed, though. Oakland beat Olivares three times in 1998, ripping him for 15 earned runs in 11 innings, and they battered him at the end of spring training, scoring five runs on six hits in 4 1/3 innings on March 30. They thought Thursday’s game was an aberration.

“Sometimes,” Giambi said, “even a blind squirrel can find a nut.”

Then why did it seem the A’s were swinging with blindfolds on? Not only did Oakland manage only four hits, very few balls were even hit hard.

“He’s an example of a guy where spring training doesn’t matter,” Oakland catcher A.J. Hinch said of Olivares. “A sinkerball pitcher and Arizona are not a good combination, but up here he just pounded the strike zone.”

Just like the Angels pounded pitchers Gil Heredia and Kevin Jarvis. Salmon’s RBI double made it 1-0 in the first, RBI singles by Garret Anderson and Troy Glaus keyed a three-run third, and Salmon and Todd Greene homered to right-center in the fifth, making it 6-0.

The Angels then bombed Jarvis for five runs in the sixth, Salmon highlighting the rally with a bases-loaded line drive over the left-field wall.