Angels’ Patience Pays Off

For a night, Bill Stoneman could put down the phone and pick up a few chicken wings.

The Angels run a promotion with a local restaurant. If the home team scores 10 runs, the home fans get free wings. It’s been a pretty good deal for the restaurant this season: The Angels plug the promotion, and the restaurant gives away nothing.

For the first time this season, the wings are on the house. With Juan Rivera hitting a grand slam, Tim Salmon hitting a home run and Salmon and Garret Anderson drawing bases-loaded walks, the Angels thumped the Seattle Mariners on Friday, 12-7, at Angel Stadium.

One game, or even two, does not constitute an offensive revival. Stoneman, the Angels’ general manager, won’t stop his search for a big bat. After the Angels scored one run in three consecutive games this week, Manager Mike Scioscia said Stoneman was exploring possible trades.

In the two games since then, the Angels concluded their trip by scoring 12 runs and opened their homestand by scoring 12 more. The Angels love to defend their free-swinging ways, but it is no coincidence that they set a season high for walks in each game, seven on Wednesday, nine on Friday.

“You can’t force walks, but you can force getting into good hitting counts,” Scioscia said. “That’s important to us.”

Orlando Cabrera walked twice; he’s the only Angel with more walks than strikeouts. Salmon walked twice. The Angels scored six runs in the fourth inning, on Rivera’s grand slam, two singles, four walks and a hit batter.

In two games since Scioscia and batting coach Mickey Hatcher met with the hitters to remind them that they need not swing at every pitch, the Angels have drawn 16 walks and scored 24 runs.

“Meetings don’t mean anything unless you go out and do something,” Hatcher said. “These guys are going out there and doing it. They’re the ones policing it. I like that.”

Billy Beane doesn’t run this team, and the Angels aren’t necessarily looking for walks. But, Hatcher said, they want the hitters to force the pitchers to throw the ball over the plate, or at least near it.

“The pitchers have expanded the zone against us so much, it’s like a joke,” Hatcher said.

The Angels faced a rookie knuckleballer on Wednesday and two rookie middle relievers on Friday, accounting for 11 of those 16 walks.

Still, Hatcher said, the lessons of patience are applicable against the best of pitchers.

When the Angels won the World Series in 2002, they didn’t lead off many innings with walks, not with David Eckstein and Darin Erstad atop the lineup. But they did take some pitches, foul off some others and generally make the starting pitcher break a sweat.

“In the past, even when we faced very good pitchers, we could get to the seventh inning and the guy would have 100 pitches,” Hatcher said. “We haven’t been trying to doing that. We’ve been out of control. We need to get back to playing our game.”

Salmon drove in two runs, lifting his career total to 999. With his next run batted in, he’ll join Anderson as the only players in club history to drive in 1,000.

And, with every home run he hits, Salmon adds another to his franchise record.

He has five this season, second on the team behind Vladimir Guerrero, and 295 in his career.

Kelvim Escobar got the victory, but not impressively. He pitched six innings, giving up six runs and 11 hits.

The Angels put up five runs in the second inning. Escobar gave up four runs in the fourth; the Angels answered with six. On this night, they took good care of him.