Casey’s at the bat for Angels again

A .341 spring average with three home runs and eight runs batted in has all but locked up the Angels’ first base job for Casey Kotchman, and it merely confirmed what Tom Kotchman, Casey’s father, saw that day in mid-January when Casey returned from a two-month winter-ball stint in Puerto Rico.

“He got off that plane, and he looked good,” said Tom Kotchman, an Angels scout and minor league manager. “It’s one of those things where you see your kid and you just know it.”

Kotchman sat out all but 29 games in 2006 because of mononucleosis, and though he hit .421 with a team-leading 15 RBIs last spring, he later revealed he needed three or four bags of intravenous fluids a week to get through March.

He was so exhausted, Kotchman would collapse in his bed the minute he got home every afternoon and sleep through until the next morning.

This spring, Kotchman has bagged the IV bags. He hasn’t needed one all month, yet another indication the 24-year-old, who for several years was tabbed the organization’s top prospect, is completely recovered from last year’s ailment.

“I feel good, I feel strong, I feel fresh,” Kotchman said. “That level of endurance, the concentration, is there the whole time I’m on the field, before and during games. That wasn’t the case last year.”

Kotchman spent most of last summer at his Florida home, wondering when he would regain the strength and stamina required to play baseball again, but not if he would ever return at full strength.

“There were never any doubts about me about coming back, it was just a matter of when,” Kotchman said. “I wasn’t sure of the time frame.”

Neither were the Angels, who were so concerned about Kotchman they explored trades for first basemen Todd Helton and Adam LaRoche over the winter.

But any fears about Kotchman began to dissipate in Puerto Rico, where Kotchman played every inning of every game -- usually six games a week -- for two months, from mid-November to mid-January. During one nine-day stretch, because of rainouts, he played 13 games.

Almost as grueling for Kotchman was getting to the games. It was an 80-mile round trip from his apartment for home games, and his team didn’t provide a bus for away games, so Kotchman drove to those too, on roads that could be treacherous.

“I tell you what, I don’t think I’ll complain about the 405, the 5 and the 101 freeways, because it’s different down there,” said Tom Kotchman, who visited Casey for a week. “It gives you a different appreciation for everything.”

Casey estimated he drove about 4,300 miles in the two months there.

“That was a job in itself, trying to find the games,” he said. “You get the hang of it after a while, but the streets are crowded, they’re a little different, and the traffic is bad. But I made every game on time.”

Just as he has this spring, and just as the Angels expect he will this season.

“On the practice field, during his workouts, there’s much more force in his step, he has that edge back,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “Though he hit the ball well last spring, you could see he was drained.”

Scioscia wouldn’t confirm that Kotchman has edged out Kendry Morales for the first base job. “We won’t make any determination until we get back to Southern California,” he said this week.

But Kotchman is a much more polished defender than Morales, and it appears Kotchman has regained the stroke that enabled him to hit .278 with seven homers and 22 RBIs in 126 at-bats for the Angels in 2005.

“He’s been great,” batting instructor Mickey Hatcher said. “All the energy he had in previous years is back, he’s swinging good, he feels good, he feels strong. Those were the things he kind of lost last year.

“But he came into camp with a purpose, to prove he can play, and he’s doing that day in and day out. He’s the type of guy we’d like in our lineup, because we know how good a hitter he is.”

Kotchman has always hit for a high average with gap power. He makes consistent contact and has a discerning eye, which keeps his strikeouts down and his walks up, a much-needed commodity in an Angels lineup filled with free swingers.

But Kotchman, who never hit more than 10 homers in a minor league season, began driving the ball more in 2005, giving some the impression he could hit 20 to 25 homers in a full season. Not that the Angels want him focusing on the long ball.

“Every guy who comes up thinks he has to hit home runs, he has to show power,” Hatcher said. “I just keep telling him, we want a guy who’s going to hit .300, hit to the opposite field, drive in runs, and he’ll get his walks too. When he’s going good, he’ll start hitting home runs.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com