He’s a Keeper

The irony is not lost on Angel center fielder Garret Anderson or his teammates. All those years the Angels had four quality outfielders -- Anderson, Jim Edmonds, Tim Salmon and Darin Erstad -- from 1996 to 2000, it was always Anderson’s name that came up most in trade rumors. Columnists and radio talk-show hosts said he should be dealt for a pitcher, and many Angel fans thought the team could most easily part with him.

“I know,” said Erstad, now the Angels’ first baseman. “Isn’t that crazy?”

Who would have thought then that Anderson -- the singles and doubles hitter who seemed too laid-back for some in the organization, the competent but hardly spectacular defender, would turn out to be the best and most reliable of the bunch?

Edmonds had two superb years after being traded to St. Louis in 2000, but his RBI totals dipped dramatically, to 83 in 2002 and 89 in 2003. Salmon was a 30-homer, 100-RBI guy from 1995 to ’97 and again in 2000, but his production has tailed off considerably since. Erstad had a monster 2000 season, batting .355 with 25 homers, 100 RBIs and 121 runs, but he hasn’t come close to matching any of those numbers since.

And Anderson? He has hit .299 in the last four seasons, averaging 30 home runs and 120 RBIs and blossoming into “one of the best players in all of baseball,” Angel closer Troy Percival says.

Anderson led the American League in doubles with 56 in 2002 and 49 in 2003. He won team most-valuable-player honors the last three seasons, All-Star game MVP honors last summer and had the game-winning, three-run double in the third inning of Game 7 of the 2002 World Series.

Anderson, 31, has never been on the disabled list in nine big league seasons and has sat out only 11 games in four years. He has more hits, 1,508, than all but one player -- Derek Jeter, who has 1,534 -- over the last eight years.

Anderson will bat cleanup this season in a strong Angel lineup, and after developing into a Gold Glove-caliber left fielder the last three years, he will start in center field when the Angels open the 2004 season Tuesday at Seattle.

“I knew it back then,” Salmon said. “Everyone was saying, ‘You have to trade Garret.’ I felt like, ‘Hey, get rid of me.’ For the betterment of this organization, Garret is a guy you want to keep around. Thankfully, the right people believed that too.”

For all the speculation, Bill Bavasi, Angel general manager from 1994 to ‘99, could not recall a potential deal to trade Anderson.

“We came closer to moving Edmonds,” said Bavasi, now the Seattle Mariner GM. “We liked having all the outfielders, and people knew it.”

Anderson understood the logic behind the rumors. Edmonds and Salmon were more advanced than he at the time, and Erstad, as the No. 1 pick of the 1995 draft, was considered a prized possession.

“They were thinking, ‘Garret is a good player, but he doesn’t do anything special,’ ” Anderson said. “I think that had a lot to do with it.”

So did the perception -- warranted or not -- that Anderson lacked grit. Whereas Edmonds and Erstad dived into gaps and crashed into walls, the 6-foot-3, 225-pound Anderson was a stranger to grass stains.

With his long arms, long strides and an ability to catch balls off his shoe tops or high over his shoulders, Anderson has always believed he could get to more balls by running and lunging at the final moment instead of diving or sliding.

“When you’re running that fast and you go to slide, you slow up -- that’s been proven,” Anderson said. “The track stars, they lean forward at the tape. Why? Because it keeps you going.”

Now that Anderson is one of baseball’s most consistent run producers, a two-time All-Star, a World Series hero and the player the Angels look to for the clutch hit, it’s interesting how perceptions of him have changed.

Now he’s praised for knowing his athletic limits, for realizing he is simply not as acrobatic as Edmonds and Erstad, and that by diving or crashing into walls, he would risk serious injury that would take his valuable bat out of the lineup.

Now Angel fans would be irate if Anderson, who is in the last year of a four-year deal that will pay him $6.2 million, is not signed to a contract extension soon.

“What it all boils down to is numbers,” Anderson said. “If I had these numbers the first five years, that ‘lackadaisical’ would have been ‘graceful’ and ‘smooth.’ It’s the truth. But you know what? Over nine years of playing and being consistent, people can appreciate that.”

Joe Maddon, the longtime Angel bench coach who was the team’s director of player development when Anderson was drafted out of Granada Hills Kennedy High in the fourth round in 1990, always has been a believer.

“Garret plays at a gait or a speed that indicates to some people that he doesn’t care, but just because it’s effortless doesn’t mean he doesn’t care,” Maddon said. “A lot of people misread him early on. The fire within has always been there ... but intensity comes in different forms. Some aren’t as demonstrative.

“Garret’s intensity may not burn as brightly as Erstad’s or [David] Eckstein’s, it’s just manifested differently. That’s what you have to be careful about, because if you make the wrong read on a guy, you end up losing people that you shouldn’t have lost.”

Anderson’s intensity will never result in an emotional outburst -- “He’s the same guy whether he’s 0 for 10 or 10 for 10,” Angel batting instructor Mickey Hatcher said -- and you’ll never see Anderson snap a bat in half over his knee after a strikeout. He gets frustrated, but opposing pitchers will never see it on Anderson’s poker face.

“The bottom line is, when it’s all said and done, I know I’m going to get my share of hits,” Anderson said. “I don’t think I can hit, I know I can hit, and one at-bat is not going to tear me down. If you get me now, I’ll get you next time. I have the ability to wipe the slate clean after each at-bat.”

Anderson exudes a quiet confidence in everything he does, and with a bat in his hands, he is cool, calm, calculating.

“The guy I liken him to is [Seattle first baseman] John Olerud,” Percival said. “When he’s hitting, you don’t even know if he’s got a heartbeat.”

With experience, Anderson has learned to slow the game down in his mind, to think at the plate, to make adjustments from pitch to pitch.

“He’ll set up pitchers,” Percival said. “He’s very intelligent up there. He can look really bad on a pitch and then know what’s coming the next two pitches.”

As a former Boston, Texas and Seattle pitcher, Angel right-hander Aaron Sele spent seven years trying to get Anderson out, with little success. Anderson hit .353 with three homers, six doubles and 11 RBIs against Sele.

“You just don’t fool him,” Sele said. “He knows the strike zone, so he doesn’t chase really bad pitches. He’ll hit bad pitches -- you can throw a good pitcher’s pitch, and he’ll still get a hit. He has power, he’s smart, he thinks with you. He exhibits all the traits of a great hitter. You can’t afford to make a mistake against him.”

That ability to pound mistakes helped turn Anderson into a legitimate power hitter in 2000. After hitting no more than 16 home runs his first five seasons, Anderson jumped to 35 homers with 117 RBIs in 2000 and has maintained that pace since.

“It was maturity,” Anderson said, explaining his power surge. “I always knew I could do it -- it was whether or not you feel comfortable doing it. I mean, I knew I could roll out of bed and hit .300 with 10 or 15 home runs, but I’m looked at as being able to do more than that. So I decided to jump out on a limb in 2000 and try to do it.”

Anderson’s average dropped initially -- he was batting .230 in mid-May 2000 -- but he quickly learned to balance power with average and wound up hitting .286 that season. He hit .289 in 2001, .306 in 2002 and .315 in 2003.

“That came from knowing situations, knowing pitchers, knowing who you could do it off of,” Anderson said. “In 2000, I was up there looking to hit home runs and not recognizing who was pitching and what they were doing.

“Now, the game is slowed down. I’m thinking as I’m walking to the plate, ‘This is the type of guy you could hit a homer off.’ And if you’re facing Pedro Martinez, go up there, stay short, look for a pitch to hit and hit the ball square.”

How consistent is Anderson? His career average against left-handers, .294, is almost as good as it is against right-handers, .302.

This season, Anderson will be surrounded by dangerous hitters. Batting ahead of him will be Erstad and Vladimir Guerrero. Behind him will be Troy Glaus, Jose Guillen and Salmon.

“Vlad is going to make my job easier, I’m going to make Troy’s job easier, and Troy is going to make Jose’s and Tim’s job easier,” Anderson said. “If you have that many guys, there’s no breathing room.... It’s going to be pick your poison. You may pitch around a guy now, walk a guy now, and get away with it, but you can only do that so many times.”

Anderson can be difficult to pitch around because he rarely draws walks, about the only knock on him as a hitter. He has averaged 28 walks a year, the primary reason his on-base percentage, .328, is on the low side.

But Anderson is also a .291 hitter with runners in scoring position and a .303 hitter with the bases loaded, which shows he isn’t fazed by pressure situations.

Never was that more evident than in Game 7 of the 2002 World Series, when Anderson stroked a bases-loaded double to right field off San Francisco’s Livan Hernandez, driving in three runs, snapping a 1-1 tie and catapulting the Angels to a 4-1 victory.

“The funny thing about that is, our game is a matter of timing and perception,” Anderson said. “A three-run double in the third inning that gives you a 4-1 lead in Game 7 doesn’t mean as much as a three-run double in the ninth inning of Game 7.

“It’s sad, but it’s true. There was no climactic event. If I did that in the ninth inning? Oh my goodness, it would be all different. I didn’t get to parade around the bases like Joe Carter because there was a lot of game left, but the bottom line is, I did it. It got done, and we won. That’s good enough for me.”

And plenty good enough for the Angels.