No offense to Eric Chavez, Edgar Martinez and other top sluggers in the American League West, but they shouldn't be surprised if, while facing Jarrod Washburn during what should be a fantastic three-team September race, the Angels ace stands atop the mound, stares them down and sees antlers on their heads.

It's not as if he puts them in fuzzy clown hair or Groucho glasses, mind you. This is actually a sign of respect. Washburn, the 15-4 left-hander who could be the Angels' best hope to reach the playoffs for the first time since the Rob Wilfong era, is such an avid deer hunter that the concept of "big game" becomes somewhat muddled.

	Jarrod Washburn Starting pitcher Anaheim Angels Profile
	2002 SEASON STATISTICS GM IP W-L BB SO ERA 25 161.1 15-4 48 112 3.24

"I've often compared good hitters to big deer," says Washburn, who has bowhunted since he was 12, growing up in the woods of northwestern Wisconsin. "The older deer get, the bigger they get. They get old for a reason -- because they're smart. It's the same thing with good hitters. They're good for a reason, because they're smart and talented. They're constantly making adjustments to the pitchers and doing the little things they have to do to be successful."

Washburn has been doing enough little things himself to become one of the best pitchers in the American League. His .789 winning percentage is second only to Pedro Martinez's .842, and he has a shot to become the Angels' first 20-game winner since Nolan Ryan in 1974 -- when Washburn was one month old. He starts Friday night against Boston as the pitcher on whom Anaheim will rely most as it tries to fend off Seattle, Oakland and Boston in the AL playoff chase.

With Glavinesque intensity and focus on the mound, Washburn, 28 and in just his second full season in the majors, has stealthily risen to the top of a deep Anaheim rotation that includes veterans Kevin Appier and Aaron Sele. He doesn't shy away from the term "ace," and neither do his teammates or manager Mike Scioscia. "Jarrod's been that guy -- it's very clear the impact he has on the rest of the team," Scioscia says. Adds center fielder Darin Erstad, "He definitely has responded. If we're struggling, he's got to be the man to stop the tough times. When he's on the hill he gives us that extra boost."

The boost he provides has little to do with speed. Though Washburn is a fastball pitcher -- he estimates throwing heat 90 percent of the time -- it's less hot than tepid, rarely reaching above the high 80s. Instead, Washburn is a rare pitcher who eschews breaking pitches and changeups for fastballs of several different speeds that he can throw to almost any spot in the strike zone. His control is still imperfect -- he has walked 48 in 161 1/3 innings this year, and his high pitch counts keep him from going deep into games -- but he survives on movement and command, the ability to throw quality strikes at the right times.

"I don't really have any secrets," says Washburn, who won an AL-high 12 straight decisions from April 19-July 21. "I take a little bit off every once in a while. I put a little extra on every once in a while. I move it around the zone. I think to be successful with just a fastball you have to have good command of it.

"I've been throwing a two-seamer a little bit more this year. Sometimes it'll sink, and sometimes it'll cut. Other than that the biggest key has been the changing speeds. I'll lob it in once in a while -- people might think it's a changeup, but it's just a four-seam fastball that I happen to lob in there. It's all the same sign -- (catcher) Bengie (Molina) puts down just one finger. He's gotta guess which one's coming."

Hitters haven't guessed particularly well. Washburn's 3.24 ERA is among the league's top 10. He has cut half a run off his already-solid 3.74 and 3.77 ERAs the past two years, when injuries and lack of season-long stamina kept him from taking the next step to frontline starter. Nonetheless, his career statistics bear striking resemblance to fellow AL West lefty Mark Mulder of the A's; Mulder gets more renown thanks to his 21-win season of a year ago, and at 25 is three years younger, but at similar stages in their careers their performance has been virtually identical:

Pitcher	W-L	ERA	GS	BAA	BB	SO
Washburn	43-24	3.88	90	.246	192	374
Mulder	44-25	4.10	83	.264	165	350

An unimposing 6-foot-1 and 187 pounds with husky blond whiskers, Washburn has established himself as quietly as he stalks deer near his hometown of tiny Webster, Wis. (population 623). Just across the Minnesota border in what Washburn dreamily describes as "the middle of nowhere," Webster has no stoplight. His lakefront family house never had cable TV and still doesn't. His father was a police officer, his mother a seamstress. And he has married his high school sweetheart, Kerrie, whom he met in the fourth grade.

As for baseball, Washburn had to ride his bike 11 miles during the short Wisconsin summers to even get to practice. (Such treks are part of major-league charm: Manny Ramirez subwayed over an hour to Brooklyn every afternoon after school, and Ryan Dempster regularly took a 40-minute ferry from Gibsons, British Columbia to the Vancouver mainland to pitch for his summer-league team.)

Washburn pitched well in high school, but against such poor competition that no colleges or scouts courted him for the next level; to showcase himself for Wisconsin-Oshkosh he videotaped himself pitching on the waxed floor of his high school gymnasium.

	“	I don't really have any secrets. I take a little bit off every once in a while. I put a little extra on every once in a while. I move it around the zone. I think to be successful with just a fastball you have to have good command of it. ”
		— Jarrod Washburn

He hooked on with the Titans and was redshirted his freshman year because he could barely throw a strike. He began to blossom the next year and helped the team win a Division III national championship -- pitching a complete game in the final -- and after an All-America season in 1995 was drafted by the Angels with the first pick in the second round.

Washburn's cold-weather roots and an alarmingly long list of miscellaneous injuries (pulled rib cage and biceps muscles, stress fracture in shoulder, strep throat ...) kept him from reaching the big leagues and getting an uninterrupted season there until last year, when he entered September with an 11-6, 3.41 record. But he limped to an 0-4, 5.76 mark the rest of the way as the Angels collapsed along with him.

"The only question with Jarrod Washburn's whole career has been stamina," Scioscia says. "He's never gone from start No. 1 to 33, 34, 35 and maintained his stuff and maintained his effectiveness. That's the only question he has to answer."

Washburn's reply for now is that thanks to a new physical-therapy program he feels 100 percent for the first time this late in a season. Nothing gets him going more than the thought of starting Game 1 of the playoffs -- or, as the tight AL West race suggests could be more likely, the last game of the season against Seattle when that postseason spot could be on the line. From how teammates describe Washburn's unflappability on the mound -- "He'll go after anyone and anybody, no matter the situation," Erstad raves -- there's no one they'd prefer holding their hopes.

It's better than him holding an ostrich. Yes, an ostrich. Seems as if two spring trainings ago Washburn took it upon himself to rent an 8-foot-tall, squawking, Big Bird-looking beast and bring it to an Angels clubhouse meeting. Poor Ramon Ortiz was so petrified, Washburn laughs, "He was stuck to the back of his locker."

"I wasn't surprised," Erstad recalls. "When Jarrod does something, he does it to the fullest." Whether he's hunting game or pitching in one.

Alan Schwarz is the Senior Writer of Baseball America magazine and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.