Astacio Is Tough Nut for Dodgers to Crack

For some reason, baseball players would rather do anything than talk about themselves when they’re swinging the bat well.

With all that Dodger catcher Todd Hundley has been through this year, you’d think he would welcome the chance to talk about the power surge he has experienced recently.

He hit a two-run homer to put the Dodgers ahead in the eighth inning in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, one day after he hit his fifth career grand slam. Seven of his last 13 hits have been home runs.

When the topic came up Wednesday, Hundley all but clenched his teeth.

“It’s basically having the opportunity to play,” he said. “Being comfortable in the box, seeing day-to-day live pitching. The time I took off earlier in the year, all that work is starting to pay off now.

“And, yes, I do hate to even talk about this.”

Well, it sure beats answering questions such as “Why can’t you throw any runners out?” or “When are you going to provide that serious left-handed bat the Dodgers need?”

For much of the season he was a catcher who couldn’t throw and a switch-hitter who couldn’t hit. Hundley’s name might not have led off every discussion of what was wrong with the Dodgers in their disappointing first half, but it was always near the top of the lineup. “I used that as motivation,” Hundley said. “I’ve been through tougher times than this. My main concern are these 25 guys this [locker] room.

“I don’t really worry about the media ripping me, the fans or all that. The bottom line is taking care of these guys in here.”

I’ve always felt kind of sorry for Hundley. He never made any bold predictions or said anything foolish, such as whether he would make people forget about Mike Piazza. He didn’t put up a huge fight when he was taken out of the lineup in June. He has always tried to accommodate the needs and the wishes of his team, even if it meant making a fool of himself in the outfield for the New York Mets.

Hundley has the unenviable task of not only living up to Piazza’s legacy, but meeting his own standard of 41 home runs--a record for catchers--he set in 1996.

Hundley had reconstructive surgery on his right elbow following the 1997 season. Last year, when he returned to a Met team that had acquired Piazza in his absence, he tried playing the outfield. That went about as well as David Caruso’s movie career.

The Dodgers traded for him last December with the intention of putting him back behind the plate. Except by then his arm muscles had forgotten how to make the quick throw to second base, and his elbow didn’t feel well enough to work it out during spring training.

He came back just before opening day, and opponents stole bases at will against him throughout April. He caught only three of the first 30 men who ran on him. Meanwhile, his batting average remained below the Mendoza line. His throwing mechanics were so bad that he was benched in favor of rookie Angel Pena and spent eight days going over the basics with coach Rick Dempsey.

When Hundley first started throwing again after coming back from the surgery last year, he did so as an outfielder. Playing the outfield gave him more time to release the ball, time for a long windup before the threw. At catcher, he has to make quicker throw, cocking back just behind the ears and cutting loose. That’s not an easy move for a man with a reconstructed elbow, and he clearly lacked confidence in his throws, afraid to really test his elbow.

“For the first half of the season, I was scared to death,” Hundley said.

Now he says the elbow feels its best “since I was a kid”, and the muscles around it are stronger too.

After his stint with Dempsey, he has thrown out three of the next 18 baserunners (17%). Those aren’t exactly Pudge Rodriguez numbers, but it’s better than his 10% rate at the start of the season. Overall he had gunned down 10 of 73 runners (14%) entering Wednesday night’s game against Colorado.

Hundley has provided some left-handed power; all 14 of his homers are from the left side of the plate.

Hundley feels as though his season is really only beginning. The question now is whether he and the Dodgers can get out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves, whether he can get his average out of the .220-230 range and the team can climb above .500.

The clock has been running on the Dodger season. It stopped being “early” more than a month ago. But for Hundley, in essence it really is only the beginning. He has had his spring training at the major league level--and he has worked out the kinks.

“I’ve talked to other people that I know around the league--coaches, so on and so forth--[and said] to watch me from here on out and make your evaluations on me from here on out,” Hundley said. “Whatever the future holds for me, make your evaluations from here on out and forget about the first half, because that just wasn’t me.”

That sounds like good advice for the rest of us as well.

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.