Santana got his off year out of way

TEMPE, Ariz. -- It will take a number of regular-season starts to determine whether the Ervin Santana Restoration Project is a success, but the Angels’ right-hander, who was so erratic he was demoted to triple-A Salt Lake last July, has poured a solid foundation.

Santana, who went 28-16 in his first two big league seasons, fell out of his mechanics and lost his confidence in 2007, going 7-14 with a 5.76 earned-run average.

But the 26-year-old rebounded in September, going 2-2 with a 2.96 ERA in six games, and built on that by going 3-1 with a 1.91 ERA in seven winter league games in the Dominican Republic, throwing six no-hit innings one game.

“As a young pitcher, when you have early success, sometimes either the league catches up to you or something happens where you have an off year,” pitching coach Mike Butcher said. “He went through his off year, and it was a very good learning experience.

“He’s matured a ton. Any time you go through a year with ups and downs like that, you grow, you learn how to deal with adversity. I feel very good about what we’re going to get from him this year.”

So does Santana, who joined the Angels for Saturday’s workout after arriving a day late because of visa problems.

“I think that was the point [of pitching winter ball], to get my confidence back,” said Santana, who struck out 30 and walked 10 in 28 1/3 winter-league innings. “I was there to make sure every pitch was the same, to work both sides of the plate.”

The key to consistency for Santana is to repeat his delivery. Last season, his front shoulder flew open too often, causing his arm slot to drop and his pitches to flatten out and lose velocity. That prevented Santana from using his lower body as much as he should, a flaw Manager Mike Scioscia thought was most glaring.

“He’ll tell you about the shoulder, but the real breakdown was with his hip,” Scioscia said. “He threw well early, but as the season went on, I think he tried to do some things with the ball that maybe he wasn’t ready for, like throwing two-seam fastballs.

“He was trying to compete at that point with bad mechanics, and it started to take him the other way. When he came back [from Salt Lake] you could see the hip turn returned, and everything came back. He maintained it here, and that’s what we’re excited about.”

Kelvim Escobar said when Toronto drafted him as a 17-year-old in 1993, team doctors did not expect him to have a very long career.

The reason? Escobar was born without a supraspinatus muscle -- one of the four rotator-cuff muscles -- in the back of his right shoulder. If you poke a finger into Escobar’s back, you can feel a little hole where the muscle should be.

Having pitched 10 years in the big leagues, Escobar has defied those predictions, but he’ll be 32 in April, he has thrown 1,502 big-league innings, and his defect may have contributed to the shoulder problems that forced him to the disabled list last April and have sidelined him this spring.

“It’s no secret I’ve been pitching for a long time,” said Escobar, who won’t begin a throwing program until mid-March. “My shoulder is weak. Nothing is torn, but it doesn’t help that I don’t have a muscle in the back of my shoulder.”

Escobar, who went 18-7 with a 3.40 ERA last season, is happy with the progress he is making, but he is still experiencing considerable pain, so much so that “it’s like a knife going in there on some exercises,” he said.

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com