Angels pitcher Scott Kazmir tries to turn negative into positive

reporting from tempe, ariz.Scott Kazmir spoke in a voice soft and low, but the feelings his words revealed were unmistakable.

“It was very frustrating, very frustrating,” the Angels starting pitcher said of his subpar performance in last year’s American League playoffs.

And after the Angels lost to the New York Yankees in the AL Championship Series, “I came into the off-season bitter, frustrated,” the 26-year-old left-hander said as the Angels prepared to open this year’s spring-training season Thursday against the Chicago White Sox. “I felt like I let the team down.”

But that frustration lasted only a couple of days, Kazmir said, after which he decided to devote the rest of his off-season to a redoubled work regimen aimed at preventing another such letdown.

It was a decision that “was almost immediate,” even before the Yankees had finished off the Philadelphia Phillies in six games to win the World Series, he said. “I felt like, in certain situations, if I had done what I was capable of doing, it would have been a different outcome.”

The outcome sought by the Angels and Kazmir, of course, was for the Houston native to bolster their shaky starting rotation and help lead them to the World Series. That’s why the Angels traded three players on Aug. 28 to acquire Kazmir, an All-Star in 2006 and 2008, from the Tampa Bay Rays.

He then made six regular-season starts for the Angels and, despite a record of only 2-2 in that span, his earned-run average was a stellar 1.73 as the Angels wrapped up the AL West crown.

“He was a big part of why we led the world in pitching for the last, probably, five weeks of the season,” Manager Mike Scioscia said.

Then came the playoffs.

In a start against the Boston Red Sox in Game 3 of the AL division series, Kazmir gave up five runs in six innings and left losing, 5-2. But the Angels rallied to win the game, sweeping Boston in three games and reaching the ALCS.

In the championship series, Kazmir started Game 4 against the Yankees at Angel Stadium and was roughed up for four runs in four innings. New York went on to win the series, four games to two.

Losing the series hit Kazmir especially hard because the Angels “traded for me to contribute at that time, during that time, and it didn’t happen,” he said. When the playoffs started, he said, “everything felt great, I was ready to get out there for the postseason. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to.”

So Kazmir – already armed with a 94-mph fastball and a well-regarded slider – went back to work to bolster his overall strength to get more pop and consistency with his pitches.

“I felt like my velocity was kind of touch and go,” Kazmir said. “It was there, it wasn’t there.

“I changed quite a few things in the off-season by how I approached my workouts and prepared for this season. I’m a lot stronger, I’m more focused. It’s going to help me out repeating my delivery, getting more torque, more strength, have a little bit more on my fastball.”

Kazmir said “it’s not like I never did anything during the off-season, I worked out. But nothing like this, nothing where I was really on a strict regimen every single day.”

“Sometimes I’d do almost two [sets] a day, where you’d go in the morning, get your workouts done, and next thing you know a couple hours later you’re out on the track doing mobility” workouts again, he said. All of them “strengthen your delivery. It makes pitching so much easier.”

Kazmir is getting help from Angels pitching coach Mike Butcher, who also guided Kazmir in 2006 when Butcher was pitching coach for Tampa Bay.

“I’m liking what he’s doing right now,” Butcher said after watching Kazmir throw in practice Wednesday at Tempe Diablo Stadium. And Butcher said Kazmir’s strenuous workouts will benefit the pitcher mentally as much as physically.

“Part of the process of pitching is feeling good about what you did in the off-season,” Butcher said. “If you feel good about what you did – you put the hay in the barn, so to speak – now you go out there and perform.”

And Scioscia said there’s no harm in using last year’s playoffs as an incentive to try harder.

“There’s all sorts of aspects of how you deal with disappointment in this game,” Scioscia said. “There are guys who use it for motivation. Some guys turn the page.

“But I don’t anticipate anything lingering” with Kazmir, Scioscia said, adding that just like last fall, “we expect big things from him.”

james.peltz@latimes.com

Times staff writer Mike DiGiovanna contributed to this report.