Edmonds Deal Is in the Cards

The Angels have gotten themselves a National League all-star pitcher who won 18 games in 1999. They’ve also gotten a potential starting second baseman.

For this they’ve given up Jim Edmonds. You remember Jim Edmonds. Just this week, Angel General Manager Bill Stoneman sternly told us all to stop the speculation about Edmonds leaving the Angels. Stoneman told us, in all honesty, that Edmonds would be all Angel all the time.

Edmonds now belongs to the St. Louis Cardinals. Let’s hope Edmonds didn’t actually believe Stoneman. But let’s not call Stoneman a liar. Because it’s time to celebrate, just a little, if you’re an Angel fan.

So welcome Kent Bottenfield, a 31-year-old right-hander who was 18-7 last year with a 3.97 ERA and 124 strikeouts with the Cardinals. Now put down the champagne bottle and quit that screaming. In all his previous major league seasons, Bottenfield won another 18 games. Total. But Stoneman says his scouts tell him Bottenfield is throwing this spring just like he did last season.

And Stoneman never stretches the truth. Well, maybe once.

Bottenfield will be a free agent after this season, just like Edmonds, so the Angels have traded one rent-a-player-for-a-season for another. No cause for celebration there. But if Bottenfield pitches anywhere near as well as he pitched last year, then he is the ace of the Angel staff. And Stoneman says Bottenfield has found himself. Stoneman never stretches the truth. Well, maybe just once.

If this had been just an Edmonds-for-Bottenfield deal, the Angels would be better off than they were yesterday. But Stoneman also got Adam Kennedy, an eager, young second baseman who played at Cal State Northridge and was the Cardinals’ minor league player of the year in 1999 and who, Stoneman says, was ready to charter a plane from Florida to Tempe so he could join the Angels as soon as possible. In other words, Kennedy wants to be here.

Best of all, if you’re an Angel fan, is that Stoneman did something. Since Stoneman was hired from Montreal in November, Angel fans have been waiting for Stoneman to do something. Letting ace Chuck Finley leave via free agency for Cleveland was not considered doing something.

This is doing something.

“My own view,” Stoneman said after the deal was announced Thursday, “is that the American League West is a pretty even division. This deal helps us tremendously in balancing out our ballclub and helps us tremendously in competing in the [AL] West. This is not a year we’re saying we’re not going to be a competitive club. This is a year we intend to be an excellent club and to make a run at things in the West.”

And surely Stoneman is telling the truth.

Surely Stoneman has heard the grumbling. Surely he has heard the frustration over the horrendous pitching prospects and the frustration of prospective ticket buyers who have wondered exactly what is going on, since nothing much seemed to be. The big talk coming from team President Tony Tavares at the end of last season about how nobody was safe and that big shake-ups were coming had turned into nothing. Just nothing.

Until now.

“Our original intent was to get somebody,” Stoneman says, “back when I arrived in November, to get starting pitching help this year. I’ll tell you what. The road that we’ve been on between then and now has proven to me that you just don’t get starting pitching. Everybody’s looking for it. It’s so difficult to get it.”

A lot of people who aren’t baseball lifers could have given Stoneman that insight. They might also have asked that if starting pitching is so precious, then why, exactly, had career-long Angel and longtime ace Finley been allowed to leave, just leave, just walk away with no compensation walking in.

Stoneman spoke proudly of Bottenfield and Kennedy and of his efforts in making this trade. He was less eager to speak about whether the Angels would try to sign Bottenfield after this season.

“That’s a contract issue and that’s an employment issue now between the club and Kent Bottenfield,” Stoneman says, “and I’d really rather leave that unanswered.”

And, no, Stoneman says, that was no lie he told Edmonds and the public earlier this week. Stoneman says he told all the clubs he’d been talking to all winter, the ones we heard about and maybe some we hadn’t, “that we would not be dealing with them any longer in a deal for Jim Edmonds. It had become pretty obvious to me we weren’t going to get anywhere. I did pull Jim aside and told him I was concerned he would be troubled and distracted with all the rumors going on.

“And I’ll tell you what. I was dead serious when I told Jim we had pulled him off the market. And I was dead serious when I spoke to the clubs I spoke to.”

The Cardinals, apparently, weren’t one of those clubs. And now Stoneman says he is dead serious about the Angels being contenders. Don’t you want to believe that too?

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com