ANAHEIM – It is all about starting pitching with the Angels, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. On Thursday afternoon, the team and its fans – at least those able to get off of or play hooky from work – saw enough to suggest that maybe their six-man rotation will have enough depth to keep this going.

Granted, the Angels were playing the Cleveland Guardians, who came in with a six-game losing streak. With a 4-1 getaway day victory, they saw a heartening performance from Reid Detmers, the 10th overall pick in the 2020 draft out of Louisville.

In his first three starts of 2022, Detmers had a 6.57 ERA and a 1.297 WHIP and averaged a little more than four innings per start. Thursday, even after throwing 16 pitches to the first two hitters (a walk to Myles Straw and a nine-pitch strikeout of Amed Rosario, Detmers subdued the Guardians over five innings on a season-high 88 pitches, 60 for strikes, allowing two hits and Cleveland’s only run on Austin Hedges’ two-out homer in the fifth.

Fastball command was the key. Detmers threw four-seamers on 47 of his 88 pitches, hitting 95.9 mph on his third pitch of the afternoon and staying in the 93-94 range most of the day, up a tick from the 92.8 average of his first three starts. He got four whiffs and 10 called strikes,  but the most important number was 36 of those 47 fastballs for strikes.

“I’ve been saying I need to work on that for the past couple of weeks,” Detmers said. “Today it finally showed. Fastball felt good. Changeup also felt good. Slider, still a work in progress. Curveball felt good. Overall, I’ll take that any day.

“I’d like to fix that (high pitch count) a little bit. I’d like to get further into games, but you’ve just got to get ahead. Obviously, the game’s a lot easier in the count. I did get ahead, I think, to Straw (in the first), and he just got away. But, I mean, just try to pitch to contact.”

Was this perhaps a breakthrough?

“The past couple of starts haven’t really been what I’ve wanted,” he said. “I mean, they haven’t been terrible but they haven’t been great. But to finally go out there and kind of feel good and have some success, it’s always nice.”

His has been a rapid rise. After the summer of pandemic-forced inactivity that all minor leaguers and new signees experienced in 2020, Detmers started 2021 in Double-A, played in the midseason Futures Game, reached Triple-A long enough to make one start, and was called up to the Angels last August, with a 1-3 record and 7.40 ERA in five starts and a 1.790 WHIP.

He is still a work in progress, just like his slider. And it is probably asking way too much for a guy who still has rookie status to jump the line so quickly, but all of baseball knows how starting pitching has let the Angels down more often than not over the past decade. Shohei Ohtani, Noah Syndergaard, Patrick Sandoval and Michael Lorenzen have pulled their weight so far, so it is Detmers as well as fellow lefty José Suarez on whom they’re waiting to catch up.

“The big thing with (Detmers) is just command, overall,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said before Thursday’s game. “Landing his breaking ball’s very important. Better overall command of his fastball is gonna matter, too. … Just getting ahead of hitters, like any other pitcher (is important). He hasn’t really done that to this point in the major leagues, but he will. He’s really good.”

The manager’s summation afterward:

“I loved his fastball today. That was really good stuff from the side. It might just be my imagination, but it looked like he had greater extension out front and the ball’s coming out hotter. And that could just be a day when he’s a little bit more comfortable and confident, really loosened up to the point where you let things go.

“You can expect more of what you saw today.”

Again, this was a slumping team Detmers was facing, so take that into account. But the Angels now have put together a five-game winning streak and had received big-time performances from Lorenzen, Sandoval and Ohtani the previous three nights, and maybe a little bit of a “can you top this?” attitude spurred Detmers Thursday.

“Oh, for sure,” he said. “I mean, you watch the guys before and you don’t want to have a bad outing. And getting to watch these guys every day, it’s truly amazing. We have a great staff and great people to work with, and yeah, you just want to give it your best every time because we’re good.

“We’re good,” he repeated.

There’s almost certainly a feeling of not wanting to be the guy in the rotation who forces an early call to the bullpen too often. Too many of those add up. Thus, getting pitch counts under control is critical.

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Rosario’s two at-bats helped bump Detmers’ pitch count Thursday, the nine-pitch at-bat in the first and an 11-pitch ordeal in the third, when Rosario fouled off seven pitches.

Otherwise?

“He looked more comfortable, confident,” Maddon said. “But again, he knew where his fastball was going and I think that had a lot to do with it. I just saw a more assertive, aggressive, better repeatable delivery with the fastball coming out harder. That was the difference for me.”

So as April winds to a close, things are good in Anaheim. The Angels (13-7) were headed for the airport and the start of a seven-game trip to Chicago (against the White Sox) and Boston as the AL West leaders.

And while just a little over 12% of the regular-season schedule has been played, it’s always better to be the hunted than the hunter.

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