No Sign of Distress on Mays’ Day

The slider was sliding, the curve was curving, his changeup was changing, every pitch was tickling the corner of the plate, leaving the Angel hitters tied up in knots and wishing for the New York Yankees to come back.

Joe Mays was doing what Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina and David Wells couldn’t. He was making the Angels overanxious, unbalanced, frustrated and mostly useless at the plate and making his manager, Ron Gardenhire, look like the smartest guy in baseball.

Mays, a 26-year-old right-hander who missed a big chunk of this season with an inflamed muscle in his pitching elbow, who floundered helplessly against Oakland last week in his first postseason start, lasting only 3 2/3 innings in Game 2, giving up six of Oakland’s nine runs by pitching timidly, by not trusting his arm and the way it can make a ball sink and swerve and do somersaults to the plate, beat the Angels on Tuesday night in the Metrodome by pitching eight innings, by giving Anaheim no earned runs, by believing in himself, by leaving, as he said, “my brain on top of my locker and just throwing the ball.”

This is advice Ramon Ortiz, the Angels’ Game 2 starter, should follow. Ortiz was as ineffective, over-thinking, nervous and jumpy in his own first postseason start last week. If Angel fans want to take anything positive from Tuesday’s game it is that maybe Ortiz will do what Mays did.

“I set my head up in my locker and I went down there and pitched a game that I feel is the game of my career,” Mays said. “I went out and trusted what I have.”

While Mays sat in the dugout during the ninth inning, his head was buried in his hands. He didn’t want to watch Twin closer Eddie Guardado save his 2-1 win. He didn’t want to peek when Tim Salmon walked with one out, didn’t want to uncover his eyes while Garret Anderson flied out and Troy Glaus struck out, frozen and looking at strike three.

“I just wanted to let the crowd tell me the game was over,” Mays said.

When Gardenhire announced his pitching rotation for this American League championship series Monday, he said, “Let the second-guessing begin.”

The decision to start Mays caused some consternation. In his horrible outing against Oakland, Mays had seemed overwhelmed by the situation, unnerved by the pressure.

“I mean, the noodle starts rolling, you start over-thinking, you’re trying to think two or three pitches ahead when you should just go out and throw the ball over the plate,” Mays said. “My coaches talked to me, told me to go out there and trust the stuff I have and believe in what I’m trying to do and execute the pitches instead of over-thinking and trying to analyze every mistake I make.”

For a man who was supposed to be emotionally disabled after the Oakland disaster, for a man who was passed up as the starter in Game 5 Sunday in Oakland, when Brad Radke took his place, Mays was a man supremely calm and totally confident in himself and his stuff Tuesday.

He threw first-pitch strikes to the first six Angels he faced. No leadoff hitter got on base against Mays. He walked nobody.

Minnesota pitching coach Rick Anderson said he could tell when Mays was warming up that it was going to be a good night.

“He had the good flow,” Anderson said. “He was moving the ball in and out, up and down and when the game started, he was using all his pitches. The thing about Joe was that after the Oakland game, he didn’t lose his confidence. He wasn’t happy. He came to me and said, ‘Rick, I know what I did wrong. I didn’t let the ball work for me.’ Tonight, he let the ball work for him. This game’s great for second-guessing, but I knew it was the right decision to let Joe start.”

Last season, Mays made the All-Star team and finished with a 17-13 record and a 3.16 earned-run average. But this season had barely begun when Mays’ right elbow began hurting. He was out from April 15 to July 20 and spent the rest of the season trying to find his touch, locate his feel for the strike zone and rediscover his faith in his talent.

“It was hard watching this team do so well and feel like I wasn’t contributing,” Mays said. “I even heard people wonder if I should be on the postseason roster. I heard the talk that I shouldn’t have started this game. But that talk didn’t come from anybody on this team or from my coaches.”

Gardenhire laughed when he was asked what worked for Mays against the Angels. “It would take less time if I tell you what wasn’t working.”

That’s what happens to the winning teams, the playoff teams, the teams that keep advancing through the postseason. Somebody unexpectedly finds a new and special gear, makes an unexpected impact.

“That’s what we envision with Joe Mays,” Gardenhire said. “A guy going at the hitters, making them swing the bats, going right at them, attacking.”

Over and over, Mays talked about trusting himself. It was all about trust, about belief, about confidence. Those are the things that have carried the Angels so far too, the things that all underdogs need to have, the things that will serve Ortiz well tonight. If he has them.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com

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A-Mays-ing at Home

Joe Mays seemed to be a curious selection as Minnesota’s Game 1 starter in the American League championship series, considering his 4-8 record and 5.38 earned-run average in the regular season and the pounding he took (nine hits and six runs allowed in 3 2/3 innings) in Game 2 of the division series at Oakland. But Mays had pitched well at the Metrodome late in the season. A look at his last five starts at the Metrodome and on the road:

*--* Metrodome Road Innings 36 1/3 26 Hits 25 37 Runs 6 21 Earned Runs 4 20 Walks 7 11 Strikeouts 15 7 HR Allowed 0 7 W-L 3-1 1-3 ERA 0.99 6.92 Note: Against the Angels Tuesday, Mays pitched into the eighth inning for only the second time in 19 starts this season and retired the leadoff man in each inning

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