Gutter Ball

Slumps make situations predictable.

Angel third baseman Troy Glaus waited at the plate with two strikes on him Friday. Dodger pitcher Kevin Brown, one of baseball’s best, peered in.

Two weeks ago, you could pencil in a “K” in your scorebook. Heck, you could have even used a pen. However, on Friday night, Brown fired and Glaus buried the pitch in the left-field bleachers.

“I’m reacting to the pitches now,” Glaus said. “I’m not trying to do too much with them.”

Shaking free from a hitting funk can be that easy . . . when the other team cooperates.

Darin Erstad did everything right in the eighth inning Saturday. The pitch was away and he went with it. You could almost hear the line drive whiz as it went toward left field.

Dodger third baseman Adrian Beltre leaped and snagged it for the out. Erstad looked skyward, as if to ask, “Why?”

“Hitting the ball hard is a consolation,” Erstad said. “But if it is not helping the team win, who cares?”

Glaus and Erstad have had their slumps analyzed and dissected for a month. The anemic bats are more noticed because teammates Tim Salmon, Jim Edmonds and Gary DiSarcina are absent. With three regulars on the disabled list, there’s pressure on the rest to pick up the slack.

Instead, Glaus and Erstad checked out.

Glaus was six for 74 from May 3-27. Erstad’s slump hasn’t been so dramatic, but his average has tumbled from .310 on April 15 to .227 today.

There are no quick fixes.

“When the basic things are there and they are still struggling, you have to throw it all out the window and go back to the No. 1 basic,” hitting coach Rod Carew said. “You see the ball and get your hands to the ball and forget about where your feet are and what your body is doing.”

Even then, success is not guaranteed.

“I went 0 for 17 one time and I hit 10 balls on the nose right at guys,” said Carew, who had 3,053 hits during his 19-year career. “There was nothing I could do about it except tell them to move. But they had been standing in those spots so long. . . .”

No one could have suffered more than Erstad, whose intensity never allows him to accept good efforts without good results. No one could have sweated it out more than Glaus, who was on the brink of being shipped back to triple-A.

The situation is a little better today.

Glaus is on a tear, similar to the way he started the season. He is 13 of 30 in the last nine games, with four home runs and eight runs batted in.

Erstad’s numbers are not so impressive, but he has gone five for 23 in the last five games and many of the outs have been well hit.

“I’m comfortable, I’m just not getting any hits,” Erstad said. “I’m a perfectionists and take things to heart. I don’t care if I get three jam shots, if they help the team win. I can hit three balls hard, but if they are outs, I don’t care.”

So when Erstad had no hits, but two RBIs in the season opener, that was just fine with him. The Angels beat Cleveland, 6-5.

By mid-April, things were not so well. He was hitting .310, but with only four RBIs. It was a far cry from how he started the 1997 season, when he had six home runs and 17 RBIs in April.

“Darin beats himself up,” Carew said. “That’s good, but it can also be bad. You put the added pressure on yourself.

“He will sit around here, way after a lot of guys have gone, and look at tape and think about things. Sometimes you have to say, ‘Forget it. I’m just going to go out there with a free head and let it happen.’

“I’ve told Darin, you can’t guide the ball. You just have to hit it hard, let it go where it goes.”

Sunday, Erstad not only hit one where they ain’t, he hit one where they will never be. His bases-empty home run in the seventh helped the Angels to a 7-5 victory.

“For whatever reason, I just never really got comfortable in the box at the start of the season,” Erstad said. “In the long run, hopefully, I will learn from this and it will be a good thing to have been through. At the same time, it makes you pretty miserable.”

It was probably no consolation, but Erstad did have company.

There were even more questions about Glaus when his batting took a nose-dive in May. His arrival was ballyhooed a year ago, but his bullet-train ride to the major leagues--from double-A to Anaheim in three months--left many wondering if he had been rushed.

He hit .218 and struck out 51 times in 165 at-bats after being called up in July. He was so badly fooled at times that “Glaus” seemed to be German for “caught looking.”

Glaus quieted such talk at the start of this season. He was hitting .344 with five home runs and 16 RBIs on May 2. He went hitless in three at-bats the next day, and the rest of the month was a blur.

“Several weeks into the season, Troy started trying to upper cut the ball,” Carew said. “I said, ‘Hey, what are you doing? We were having success doing something. Why change?’ He said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable.’ I said, ‘You’re going to go through streaks like this, this is what this game is about.’

“You make minor adjustments, you don’t make major adjustments. You don’t try to jump from one thing to the next and think it is going to work.”

Sound advice, but it can get muddled with other opinions.

“I think he started listening to too many people,” Carew said. “Everybody, all of sudden, had expert advice. The next think you know, he was in a tailspin.”

But when you run out of your own ideas, anybody’s will do.

“Everyone has their own opinion and they are going to share it with you,” Erstad said. “You have to separate it, take it for what it is worth and have your own plan. That is something Rod has always preached to me.”

In the end, Carew is the only person whose advice should be heeded, down to the last syllable.

“At some point, you have to put your trust in somebody,” said first baseman Mo Vaughn, who was briefly sent to the minor leagues after a slow start his second year with the Boston Red Sox. “For me, it was [Red Sox hitting coach] Mike Easler. He taught me how to approach this game. I go to Rod now. He has 3,000 hits. He knows something about hitting.”

Usually, Carew is aware even before the player approaches him.

“You notice when they start doing different things,” Carew said. “You work with them and question them to find out what and why. If they give you a valid reason, or they say I want to try something else, then you let them try it.

“You allow them some room to breathe. I watch everything they do. If I see something that is out of whack, then I have to go to him.”

Then it’s, “Roll the tape.” Carew watches more video than a film critic and can be just as harsh--and encourages players to be tough.

It worked with Glaus, who spent May trying to yank everything to left field. It didn’t take opposing pitchers long to notice. Everything was low and away through Memorial Day.

“Sometimes you can do things and not feel it,” Carew said. “He was opening up too soon. I said, ‘Look at the tape. Why am I seeing your head in the dugout?’ The body makes a lot of hitters make mistakes. Then they wonder why they miss pitches. You have to constantly tell them, ‘Let your hands go to the ball first and let your hips trail your hands.’ ”

It worked with Glaus . . . until the next time.

“Hopefully, the next time I’m in a slump, I can go right to that and get out of it faster,” Glaus said.

If not?

“Then it’s on to Plan B,” he said.