APRIL FUELED

It was the kind of vision American League pitchers dream about.

Here was Alex Rodriguez backed up against a wall. Trapped. And all he could do was blink his hazel eyes, swallow hard and accept the punishment he was about to receive.

“OK, what have you got?” he began, kicking off an impromptu media conference in the third-base dugout at Tropicana Field on Tuesday.

Rodriguez is hardly media-shy, but these days he admits he’d rather face Josh Beckett’s fastball than a reporter’s tape recorder.

“They’re both hard,” he said.

Only this mess was entirely of his own making. The night before he had gone four for five with two home runs, four runs scored and three runs batted in, extending the most prolific start to a season in baseball history. Three hours later he would prove human, though, grounding out twice and striking out in the New York Yankees’ 6-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, ending a 23-game hitting streak dating to last season.

But that did little to detract from a torrid April in which he has slugged 14 home runs, tying a record for the season’s first month with four games to play. And only Juan Gonzalez, with 35 RBIs in 1998, has driven in more April runs than Rodriguez’s 34.

That, however, doesn’t even begin to explain how dominant the Yankees third baseman has been through his first 19 games.

Rodriguez has out-homered eight big league teams. He also started Wednesday leading baseball in runs (26), total bases (79) and slugging percentage (1.013) while ranking second in hits (30) and fifth in hitting (.385).

So naturally inquiring minds -- a couple dozen of them -- were demanding to know how he was doing it.

“I can’t explain,” he said. “I know you guys are frustrated and you’re looking for some profound answer. But I don’t have one.

“I’m not trying to think about it too much. I’m trying to take every at-bat as they come and enjoy the game a little bit.”

So that has left it to others to try to explain how A-Rod has suddenly become Hot Rod. And that has produced almost as many theories -- most of them conflicting -- as Rodriguez has produced hits.

It’s the swing: He “really had a complete overhaul of his swing,” said his agent, Scott Boras. “His swing is now shorter. His bat speed is quicker. He’s really focused on technique.”

It’s not the swing: “I think his swing is the same, honestly,” Yankees bench coach and former batting instructor Don Mattingly said. “He’s doing everything the same.”

It’s all in his mind: “I think it’s more mental than anything else,” said former high school teammate Doug Mientkiewicz, now a Yankees infielder. “He takes nothing for granted. He prepares for each game like it’s going to be his last.”

It’s all in his body: “He’s more flexible. He’s looser,” batting coach Kevin Long said. “He’s just freer and that’s helped the bat get through the zone.”

It’s the sock: “Guys get in hot streaks and they all look the same. [But] this one’s got power involved with it,” Mattingly says. “You don’t see the same type of explosion as you see with Alex.”

It’s the socks: For the first time in his career, Rodriguez is wearing old-school knickers and knee-high socks, which led one New York writer to credit haute couture for the hot start, a theory Long playfully endorses. “I don’t know where he came up with that,” he says, “but I think it looks great.”

What everyone can agree on is that whatever Rodriguez is doing, it has left him in a league -- if not a planet -- of his own.

“He’s not in the major leagues,” Tampa Bay Devil Rays Manager Joe Maddon said. “He’s in that major major league.”

“With Alex,” Mattingly added, “it’s just a different planet he’s on.”

Not that Rodriguez, 31, couldn’t have qualified for an interplanetary visa before. In fact, while Rodriguez’s torrid April might not have been predictable, it shouldn’t have been surprising.

In 11 full seasons before this one, Rodriguez proved he could put up big numbers, hitting .309 and averaging 42 homers and 121 RBIs. He needs only 22 homers to become the youngest player in history to reach 500 and if he continues at his current pace, he will pass Hank Aaron’s record of 755 in seven years -- well before his 39th birthday.

In other words, the guy can hit.

“I’m not surprised. I’m not in awe,” slugger Reggie Jackson, 11th on the all-time home run list with 563, said in the Yankees clubhouse after Rodriguez’s two-homer performance Monday. “I believe he can do that. He’s got that kind of ability.”

But that also means last summer, in which he hit a respectable .290 with 35 homers and 121 RBIs, qualified as a down year for Rodriguez, who went home to Miami and began preparing for this season a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. He started by losing 12 pounds, dropping his body fat percentage from 18% to 10%.

“Your swing really works around your core,” Long said. “And he’s lost a lot of that extra bulk there.”

As a result, Rodriguez’s bat got quicker, allowing him to wait longer on pitches and still hit them with power to all fields. And Long helped too. Shortly after being named Yankees batting coach last fall, he broke down thousands of Rodriguez at-bats on film, then flew to Miami to help him correct flaws such as lifting his front leg too high and sliding through his swing rather than staying centered and rotating off his back foot.

“We felt like that was a good time to address some of these issues so that he could get the muscle memory and take that into spring training,” Long said. “It was a process, though. I don’t think it really all clicked until the last week of spring training.”

He brought more than just a new swing to spring training, though. After three seasons in which the overly sensitive Rodriguez has served as a lightning rod for disgruntled Yankees fans, he brought a new attitude with him this year as well.

“Ever since Feb. 20, ever since the first day [of spring training], I’ve been feeling like I’ve been in a good place. I’ve been feeling comfortable,” he said. “Last year just taught me a lot about reality and perception. And it’s really not that important.”

Rodriguez, who has been criticized in the past for taking himself too seriously, even poked fun at himself this spring, taping a segment for CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman” in which Biff Henderson rubbed suntan lotion on a shirtless Rodriguez, spoofing an infamous paparazzi photo of a sunbathing A-Rod in Central Park last summer.

“He’s very relaxed,” Long said. “He’s got peace with himself. I think he understands the town and just understands that, you know what, you’ve got to go out and play.”

And so far he has done that -- even if the Yankees haven’t benefited much, losing five straight games to fall into the American League East cellar.

That inspired Rodriguez to leave more than his hitting streak behind in Florida: When the clubhouse staff cleared out his locker late Tuesday night, they found his batting gloves abandoned on a shelf.

Will he soon leave New York behind too? Rodriguez can opt out of the final three years and $81 million of his contract after this season. But after conquering baseball -- for three weeks, at least -- he seems intent on conquering the Big Apple as well.

“I love New York,” he said. “It’s just the greatest place for me to play. I want to stay in New York no matter what.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Flavors of the month

Home run records for each month. March and October were left out because teams did not play full schedules in each of those months.

*--* April Alex Rodriguez, New York (2007) 14 Albert Pujols, St. Louis (2006) 14 May Barry Bonds, San Francisco (2001) 17 June Sammy Sosa, Chicago (1998) 20 July Albert Belle, Chicago (1998) 16 Mark McGwire, St. Louis (1999) 16 August Rudy York, Detroit (1937) 18 September Albert Belle, Cleveland (1995) 17 Babe Ruth, New York (1927) 17

*--*

--

Source: Baseball Almanac

Los Angeles Times

--

On track and in his prime

Baseball’s all-time home run leaders at age 31 with plate appearances (totals are through the conclusion of the year in which the player was 31 at the beginning of the season), with the players’ career totals and ages in their final season:

*--* AT 31 CAREER Player HR PA AFS HR PA 1. Alex Rodriguez 478 7,864 * 478 7,864 2. Jimmie Foxx 464 7,853 37 534 9,670 3. Ken Griffey Jr. 460 7,736 * 564 9,614 4. Eddie Mathews 422 7,800 36 512 10,101 5. Mickey Mantle 419 7,414 36 536 9,909 6. Frank Robinson 403 7,652 40 586 11,743 7. Hank Aaron 398 7,855 42 755 13,940 8. Juan Gonzalez 397 6,374 35 434 7,155 9. Mel Ott 388 8,449 38 511 11,337 10. Sammy Sosa 386 6,513 * 592 9,514 * Active players through Wednesday (Rodriguez is 31, Griffey 37 and Sosa 38)

*--*

--

Source: baseball-reference.com