Hill Making Climb Back for the Angels

The Angels don’t just need a healthy Ken Hill to contend for the American League West championship this season.

They need a dominant Ken Hill, the circa-1997 Hill who almost single-handedly kept the Angels in the pennant race following Chuck Finley’s season- ending wrist injury by going 3-1 with a 1.37 earned-run average in his last six starts that season.

For all the pleasant surprises the young pitchers have provided, the Angels lack a true rotation hammer, a guy who gives teammates a feeling they’ll win every time he takes the mound. Hill showed--at least for one night Wednesday--that he may have the tools for that role.

Making his first start since suffering a strained rib-cage muscle May 9, Hill gave up one run and four hits in six crisp innings, leading the Angels to a 3-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners before 32,581 in Safeco Field.

Shortstop Benji Gil had three hits and a run batted in, reliever Shigetoshi Hasegawa struck out John Olerud and Jay Buhner to end the eighth after giving up a homer to Alex Rodriguez, and closer Troy Percival threw a scoreless ninth for his 19th save. The Angels snapped Seattle’s seven-game win streak and pulled to within 5 1/2 games of first-place Oakland.

Hill, whose Angel career has been marked mostly by injury and inconsistency, walked three and struck out two, and he was in command the entire way, keeping his fastballs, sliders and forkballs down in the zone.

He hit 88-89 mph in the first, but Hill found such a good rhythm that by the sixth, he hit 94 mph with a pitch to Rodriguez and 95 mph with a pitch to Edgar Martinez.

“That’s been a long time coming,” Hill said. “It’s been a battle all year, but I went back to some tapes of 1996 and ’97 and picked up a couple of things that helped me a lot . . . Hopefully this will be a momentum-builder.”

Hill has shown flashes of brilliance in three years in Anaheim, but an arthritic elbow condition and other injuries have sent him to the disabled list four times.

When he pitches like he did Wednesday, one can’t help but wonder how much more of an impact he’d have if he stayed healthy for a whole year.

“He’d probably have a year [16-5, 3.32 earned-run average] like he did in Montreal in 1994,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “But that ‘what-if-a-guy-is-healthy’ question can be applied to any pitcher. His elbow flares up, he’s had a problem with his knee and lower body; he has to battle through it.”

Scioscia said it was “a big lift to see Hill pitch like that,” and Hill’s performance was well-timed, because the Angels didn’t exactly clobber Mariner starter Jamie Moyer.

They did seem inspired in the first inning, though. Fresh of a pregame team meeting in which Scioscia stressed the need to step up their performance to keep up with the fast-rising A’s and Mariners, the Angels scored two runs with some hustle and a clutch hit.

Gil singled with one out, and Mo Vaughn and Tim Salmon each walked to load the bases. Garret Anderson grounded sharply to second, a potential-double play ball, but he beat the throw by lunging for the first base bag, giving the Angels a run.

Troy Glaus singled to center for a 2-0 lead, a cushion the Angels maintained until the fourth. That’s when Martinez hit a towering homer to center to make it 2-1.

The Angels had an excellent chance to pad the lead in the fifth when Gil tripled--Seattle center fielder Mike Cameron actually leaped above the wall and pulled Gil’s potential homer back--with one out, Vaughn was hit by a pitch and Salmon walked to load the bases.

Moyer got ahead of Anderson, 0-and-2, and Anderson stayed alive by fouling off five pitches. Moyer then whiffed Anderson with a 75-mph changeup that was so slow it seemed Anderson could have swung twice.

Moyer then struck out Glaus with a 74-mph breaking ball to end the inning and extend Glaus’ Safeco Field misery. In five games here this season, Glaus is one for 15 with 12 strikeouts.

The Angels added a run in the seventh when Erstad singled and Gil whistled an RBI double past third baseman David Bell, who was expecting a bunt.