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Jerome Williams had an inkling something was wrong during his sophomore season at Waipahu High near Honolulu.

“She wasn’t coming to any of my games or anything,” Williams said. “Every time I came back from a game, she’d be asleep already.”

Eventually, they couldn't hide it from him any more. Williams found out that his mother, Deborah, was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. That was in 1996. Within two years, doctors thought they had contained, isolated and destroyed the disease, and Deborah Williams seemed to be on the road to a full recovery.

But in November 2000, barely over a year after her son had been drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the first round, Deborah Williams lost vision in her left eye while driving with her son and husband between Las Vegas and San Diego. Subsequent tests turned up another tumor, one that would, in short order, take Williams’ mother out of his life, at the age of 43, and before he could express -- or even realize -- what she meant to him.

Mother's Day can be a painful anniversary for people who lost their moms prematurely. For Williams, the Angels’ No. 5 starter, it brings back a flood of memories, and some regrets for the way he behaved before his mother's death.

“At the time, I was young, I was dumb and I didn’t really want to stay around,” Williams said. “I wanted to be away from it, so when I went back home, my mom was inside our house and I would make sure I wouldn’t be home.

“I’d be going out, hanging with my friends, buying stuff, having fun, drinking. At the time, I didn’t really worry about it or care. I just cared about myself.”

There was a moment, only months from the end of her life, when Williams finally started to realize what he was about to lose or, maybe in some ways, had already lost. His father, Glen Williams Sr., ordered him to stay in the house and spend time with his mother.

Throughout Williams’ childhood, his father was out of the house by 5:30 a.m. to get to work at the shipyards in Pearl Harbor, where he worked as a carpenter. Deborah was a housewife. She was the nurturing voice in her three boys' ears. She would remind her husband that, in the home, he was a father, not a Little League coach.

Williams eventually listened to his father and approached his mother’s sickbed. Then came one of the most jarring moments of his life.

“The first words out of my mom’s mouth were, ‘What are you doing here? Get the hell out of my face,’ “ Williams said. “That blew me away. I left for like three days and didn’t come home.”

Williams had a lot on his plate that winter, a dizzying amount. In addition to a critically ill mother, he and his girlfriend had just had their first child, Tre-Jordan. Jerome Williams was 19 years old.

“I started thinking about my mom and it dawned on me: You only have one,” Williams said.

Williams eventually started spending more time with his mother that winter, but before long she was admitted to hospice care and he had to ship off to spring training. A couple of months later, in spring training 2001, he was in Scottsdale, Ariz., when he got a call at 3 a.m. that he had been dreading. It was his brother, who said “You’ve got to come home.”

“It kind of still hits me to this day, all the stuff I didn’t do that hurt her,” Williams said.

Now, more than a decade after her death, he's doing something to bring attention to her cause. More than that: to celebrate her life.

He is the only major league baseball player to wear a pink glove. It’s his way of paying tribute to the woman who raised and protected him. He also wears remnants of the puka-shell necklace she left him sprinkled inside his spikes and glued to the inside of his cap.

He picked up the pink Zett-model glove while pitching in Taiwan two seasons ago, wore it at Triple-A and, after a long road back from obscurity, brought it to a major league mound in September. First, Williams agonized over it and even sent a clubhouse attendant over to clear it with the umpires. He gave up one hit over eight innings against the Seattle Mariners that night and has worn it ever since.

For a guy who had pitched all around the globe -- from Taiwan to Puerto Rico to Venezuela to Mexico to independent ball -- just getting back on a major league field was a thrill.

On Saturday, as usual, he'll honor his mother. Knowing now, as he does every start, that he doesn't need to wait for a holiday to appreciate her.

It was another step in the right direction for the Angels in the last seven days as they went 4-2 to get to four games below .500.

Trout starting to swim

Mike Trout has injected some energy into the offense. After starting the season 4-22, the phenom is 7-16 in his last four games including his first homer of the season. Trout has feasted on offspeed pitches, going 5-10 on the season with two doubles.

Sluggers slumping

Albert Pujols has his home-run drought behind him, but he’s still batting just .198 on the season. Wednesday’s two-hit effort was his first since April 19th.

Meanwhile, Torii Hunter, who got off to a strong start to the season is just 1-23 in his last seven games.

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The Angels are tired of talking about Yu Darvish already and they haven't even faced him yet.

Torii Hunter told the Orange County Register he's not exactly quaking in his cleats at the thought of facing the Texas Rangers' right-hander for the first time Friday night.

"I'll tell you, I've faced Roger (Clemens), Pedro (Martinez), Kevin Brown when he was nasty. Do you want me to go on?" Hunter asked. "I'm pretty sure he's not Roger. He's not Pedro."

Maybe Hunter's reaction was because he's been asked to talk about Darvish since spring training. Maybe it's because, in the major leagues, you have to prove you're good over two or three years, not two or three months.

Or, maybe, it's because the Angels aren't as willing as the rest of the baseball-watching world to bow before this Rangers juggernaut just yet. The first five weeks couldn't have gone more according to Texas' plan and less according to the Angels', but this weekend -- three games at the Ballpark in Arlington, starting with Darvish against ex-Ranger C.J. Wilson -- could offer a cure for most of what has ailed the Angels.

It's a chance to convince everyone that the vibrant rivalry we thought we'd see, we still might see.

Rangers manager Ron Washington told reporters this week the Angels are a "very good team."

"They just haven't put it together," Washington said. "They'll get it together."

The Angels are actually riding a bit more momentum than Texas entering this series, having won seven of their last 10 games and showing signs of waking up from their offensive slumber. Since Jered Weaver's no-hitter, they're starting to bask in some pretty good vibes, just emerging from the month-long haze of answering Albert Pujols questions.

They'll also be better rested, with the Angels enjoying an open date in Texas Thursday while the Rangers play a nighttime doubleheader in Baltimore before flying into the wee hours of Friday morning to get home for the division showdown.

But the chasm between the two teams' performances since Opening Day might be even bigger than the seven games that separated them in the standings going into Thursday night.The Angels haven't exactly faced a murderer's row of opponents, having just completed their ninth game against the woeful Minnesota Twins, for example.

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Three-and-a-half months ago, this blog asked the question: Who would you rather have, Albert Pujols or Josh Hamilton? The response here: Pujols. Better production, better durability, longer track record.

OK, stop laughing now. Please stop laughing now.

Things change over time. It's the nature of things. So, how do we analyze this question now?

It seems wrong, not to mention sadistic, to bring up the notion that the Angels have Pujols signed for nine more years beyond this one. We'll confine our discussion to the present, since nobody can predict the future and few Angels fans have the stomach for it anyway.

We should also offer this disclaimer: Hamilton is coming off a record-breaking, four home run night and Pujols is in the worst slump of his career. Nobody -- and I mean even the Texas Rangers' horse, whatever it's called -- thinks these two players will stay on their current trajectories. But this is where we are, so let's take a look:

Pujols has 11 total bases in his last 70 plate appearances. Hamilton has 22 total bases in his last six plate appearances. (Thanks ESPN Stats & Info)

In other words, last night Hamilton doubled Pujols' production since April 20.

More fundamentally, Pujols has a .509 OPS and Hamilton has a 1.298 OPS. Hamilton has hit 14 times more home runs and driven in four times as many runs. Pujols' WAR (wins above replacement) is -6 and Hamilton's is 2.4 (the defensive metrics aren't real high on him, interestingly).

[CORRECTION: As accurately pointed out in the comments below, Pujols' WAR is -0.3, not -6]

So, according to this measure, the Rangers would be something like 18-12 if they had used their next-best outfield option; the Angels would be about 14-17 if they had plugged in their next-best first baseman. In other words, take these two players out of the equation and the Angels would only trail Texas by 4 1/2 games, easily manageable at this point of the season.

Is it scientific? Not exactly, but it also doesn't fail the eyeball test. All it really does in the final analysis is reinforce what we already knew: the Angels aren't going anywhere if Pujols doesn't pick it up soon.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- The Angels won't get their first look at the Texas Rangers' new $111 million pitcher, Yu Darvish, this weekend because the Rangers are using him in a minor-league game rather than bringing him with them to Tempe. Their pitching coach, Mike Maddux, was pretty blunt about the reason.

"(The Angels) are not going to show us (anything)," Maddux told ESPNDallas.com's Richard Durrett. "A lot of teams do that."

Turns out, he's right. Angels manager Mike Scioscia said the team likely will use C.J. Wilson in a camp game Sunday while using one of their minor-league pitchers to face the likes of Mike Napoli and Josh Hamilton. Scioscia was more coy about the reason, saying a minor-league game gives the team an opportunity to shorten innings, making sure Wilson gets to his proper pitch count and innings tally.

So, Angels hitters will still be in the dark, but the team's quest for information has already begun. Jeff Cirillo, the former All-Star infielder, has been scouting Texas for the Angels this spring, while general manager Jerry Dipoto has seen Darvish throw on a couple of occasions. Once the season starts, the scouting baton will be handed to advance man Gary Varsho. The Angels already are in the process of stockpiling video of Darvish from Japan.

"It's a bit of a cat-and-mouse game," Angels director of pro scouting Hal Morris said. "There are a lot of different areas where we're gathering information."

No matter how deeply the Angels dig this spring, the real game will begin when Albert Pujols and their other hitters get their first look from the batter's box. They could face Darvish during a three-game series in Texas May 11-13, one of -- most likely -- four to five times they'll see the right-hander this season.

Torii Hunter said the early edge will be Darvish's, but time is on the hitters' side. He said he gradually became more and more comfortable facing Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, another mega-star to emerge from Japan.

"All of the Japanese pitchers have pretty much the same style," Hunter said. "They throw almost the same breaking pitches, almost the same off-speed stuff, pitch in the same way. In fastball counts, they throw a lot of off-speed stuff and they have an explosive fastball. It might be 92 (mph), but it has a little extra get-up."

Three days into the 2011 season, the Angels' bullpen had set a tone the team would scramble for six months to change. It never quite did.

It's not often a team comes together for an impromptu, players-only meeting so close to Opening Day. But after that Saturday game in Kansas City, several Angels veterans -- including Scott Downs and Torii Hunter -- huddled in the trainers room with a couple of the team's young relievers for a pep talk.

Kevin Jepsen and Michael Kohn got their seasons off to awful starts and they eventually would be demoted to Triple-A, yanking two key relievers from the Angels' bullpen and forcing management to scramble for solutions, a process that would go on for months.

Given the rocky start, things actually came together pretty well by mid-season. The Angels' bullpen ERA (3.52) was second only to the New York Yankees' in the American League and rookie Jordan Walden used a 96-to-100 mph fastball to cement himself in the closer's role Fernando Rodney couldn't hold.

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This is part of an occasional series comparing the rosters of the two-time defending AL champion Texas Rangers and the rebuilt Angels, who could have the hottest rivalry in the league this year.

Bullpens are as unpredictable as the economy nowadays. You just never know what direction they'll go.

At this time 10 years ago, Brendan Donnelly had never thrown a major-league pitch, Ben Weber was a 32-year-old minor-league journeyman with a career 4.15 ERA and nobody had ever heard of a 20-year-old Venezuelan kid named Francisco Rodriguez. The Angels' 2002 bullpen became a virtually impermeable barrier to late-inning rallies.

Both the Angels and Rangers have had to accept some risk as they enter this season, the Rangers because they tinkered with the bullpen, the Angels because they didn't.

Instead of sticking with what worked -- strong setup men funneling the game to Neftali Feliz -- Texas seems intent on moving Feliz to its rotation and added 37-year old Joe Nathan to be its closer. Nathan pitched in 48 games for the Minnesota Twins last year -- two seasons removed from ligament-replacement surgery in his right elbow -- and had a 4.84 ERA.

The Angels sat back and watched a regiment of closer candidates sign with other teams this winter, leaving its most crucial relief role to 24-year old Jordan Walden (hometown: Arlington, Texas). Walden's blazing fastball earned him an All-Star bid but he wobbled in the final few weeks of the pennant race, one memorable meltdown against Oakland virtually ending the Angels' chances.

Whose bullpen would you rather have? The Angels had a surprising edge in 2011, with their relievers putting up a 3.52 ERA, second in the American League to the New York Yankees. Texas relievers had a 4.11 ERA, near the bottom of the league, but they also blew six fewer saves than the Angels. And Texas fortified the seventh and eighth innings by adding Mike Adams and Koji Uehara near the trade deadline.

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This is part of an occasional series comparing the rosters of the two-time defending AL champion Texas Rangers and the rebuilt Angels, who could have the hottest rivalry in the league this year.

If you were ranking this winter's free-agent news in terms of its impact on the Angels, you might have to put the stories in the following order:

1. Albert Pujols signs with the Angels.

2. Prince Fielder doesn't sign with Texas.

3. C.J. Wilson signs with the Angels.

4. LaTroy Hawkins signs with the Angels.

No offense to Wilson, a fine left-handed pitcher who I think will thrive pitching at Angel Stadium, or to Hawkins, who should be a winning influence on the bullpen in 2012. Their impact probably won't approach the damage Fielder could have done from afar over the next nine years.

Just imagine what Texas' lineup would have been like on a nightly basis after inserting a guy who has averaged 37 home runs (and hit 50 one year) and 106 RBIs, who doesn't turn 28 until May. The Rangers scored 855 runs last year, just 20 behind league-leading Boston.

Inserting Fielder would have given Texas perhaps the two most-feared left-handed hitters in the game (Fielder and Josh Hamilton) to go along with its four right-handed hitters who smacked at least 29 home runs last year. The only reason to think Texas wouldn't have had the best 3-4 hitters in baseball is you don't know whether manager Ron Washington would have broken up his two left-handed sluggers.

Not only would the Angels have had to pitch to Fielder about 75 times a year (as opposed to 25 or fewer now), they would have faced the possibility of meeting that lineup again in the playoffs. Who knows, it might have reduced the Angels to chasing one of the wild-card spots for years. Under the new proposed format, that's a far more perilous road to the World Series than winning the division.

Yeah, it's scary to think about, but now you don't have to. Instead, we can ask: Whose middle-of-the-order would you rather have, the Angels' or the Rangers'?

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The Angels had the second-best starting pitching in the American League last year, behind only Tampa Bay. Then they added C.J. Wilson, a pitcher who has gone 31-15 and allowed batters to hit just .225 off him since he became a starter two years ago.

Everything is in place to make the Angels' rotation perhaps the best in franchise history and the stingiest in their league. When he ranked baseball's best rotations, ESPN's David Schoenfield slotted the Angels at No. 2. That's great, but it's also just one place better than AL West rival Texas, which replaced Wilson with Japanese sensation Yu Darvish.

The Angels figure to need all the pitching they can get, because -- even after adding the best player in the game, Albert Pujols -- their offense isn't the equal of either of the two AL East juggernauts in Boston and New York or of Texas'. Pujols will draw more fans, but the Angels' fortunes will rise and fall in 2012, again, with how Jered Weaver, Dan Haren, Ervin Santana and Wilson perform.

Here's what Schoenfield wrote about the Angels starting pitchers:

Weaver, Haren and Santana averaged 234 innings in 2011 and now they've add Wilson to the mix. He threw 223 innings for the Rangers. The last team with four starters to pitch 220 innings? The 1997 Atlanta Braves. That team won 101 games. Wilson could have a monster season -- after all, he posted a 2.31 ERA on the road last year and allowed just six home runs in 18 starts. Pitching behind Weaver and Haren should take away some of the pressure of the big contract. Yes, [Jerome] Williams is a bit of a question mark in the five-hole, but while they traded away Tyler Chatwood the Angels still have power arm Garrett Richards as depth.

Here are the ZiPS projections (via baseballthinkfactory.org) for Angels starters:

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This is part of an occasional series comparing the rosters of the defending AL champion Texas Rangers and the rebuilt Angels, who could have the hottest rivalry in the league this year.

Neither team has the ideal leadoff hitter, but the Angels were -- and probably will be -- at a major disadvantage in setting the table for their big boppers. The two Angels who had the most at-bats leading off last year, Maicer Izturis and Erick Aybar, had on-base percentages in the leadoff role of .340 and .320 respectively. Izturis was slightly above-average, in other words, and Aybar was well below the league average.

The Rangers' Ian Kinsler was an offensive force, but you wonder whether the Rangers would have scored even more runs had he hit deeper in their lineup. He hit 32 home runs and 31 doubles as a leadoff hitter, getting on base at a .356 rate. But largely because of his slot in the order, only six of those home runs and 11 of those doubles came with runners on.

Texas manager Ron Washington might want to consider using Elvis Andrus once again as his leadoff hitter as Andrus had a .419 on-base percentage in a handful of games batting first. That would allow Kinsler to hit in a more suitable role, maybe second or seventh, say. The problem for Washington isn't really a problem. He has so many powerful hitters, finding a suitable spot for Kinsler isn't easy.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia figures to experiment more and more with using his fastest player, Peter Bourjos, in the leadoff spot. If the Angels are lucky, he'll grow into the role along the lines of Boston's Jacoby Ellsbury, who was easily the league's best leadoff hitter last year. Ellsbury is four years older than Bourjos and the Angels center fielder was rapidly improving as a hitter, so Bourjos looks like a candidate to take over the role. One key difference, of course, is that Ellsbury has shown a much greater willingness to walk. His career on-base percentage of .354 is 52 points higher than Bourjos'.

If Bourjos shows he's not ready to hit first, the Angels always have top prospect Mike Trout standing by. If they can find a place for him, he just might lock down the leadoff spot for the next 10 or 15 years. For now, advantage Rangers.

The Texas Rangers were in need of a No. 1 starter after the Angels snatched C.J. Wilson from the top of their rotation. Wednesday they got their man, agreeing to a six-year, $60 million deal with the most dominant pitcher in Japan, Yu Darvish.

What does it say about the way the Rangers evaluated Wilson? They were unwilling to match the Angels' offer of $77.5 million, so they spent more than $111 million on his replacement?

Maybe it says more about the way they valued Darvish. The Rangers have scouted the Pacific Rim as earnestly as any team in the major leagues, with the guy who figures to start Opening Day for them, Colby Lewis, their most high-profile find until this Darvish deal. They had a scout at nearly all of Darvish's 2011 starts, according to ESPN Dallas' Richard Durrett.

Darvish, 25, struck out 276 batters last year with a league-best 1.44 ERA. He throws seven pitches and has pinpoint command, according to scouting reports.

"We saw a guy that we felt was built to pitch innings and has a classic pitcher's build," Rangers general manager Jon Daniels told reporters. "He has a real commitment to his conditioning and work ethic. We think he can pitch innings at a high caliber for a large amount of time."

The 6-foot-5, 220-pound Darvish pitched in the 2009 World Baseball Classic and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In his second year, he was 12-5 with a 2.89 ERA and 115 strikeouts. He's gone 93-38 with a 1.99 ERA in his career since then.

Pitching was a much bigger part of Texas' success last year than most people realize, with the Rangers' starters posting a combined 3.65 ERA, just a few ticks behind the Angels' staff, and they had to work in a much more hitter-friendly home ballpark. If Darvish transitions as well as Daisuke Matsuzaka did, he could make things surprisingly close again between the AL West rivals. Injuries and heavy workloads caught up with Matsuzaka, but according to Fangraphs.com's Wins Above Replacement stats, Matsuzaka lived up to his salary in the first two years of his six-year deal.

So what will the Angels do to respond? Probably nothing, according to general manager Jerry Dipoto as recently as Wednesday, which is reasonable considering owner Arte Moreno has already spent more than $330 million this winter. They'll take their chances behind a beefed-up offense led by Albert Pujols and a rotation featuring Wilson, Jered Weaver and Dan Haren at the top. Now they just have to hope Texas doesn't have the money to sign free-agent slugger Prince Fielder.

The Angels landed their blows early in this off-season fight. Now, they're in a defensive position, taking body shots and hoping to win on points in the end.

The Angels' $330 million off-season spending spree has prompted many people to compare the dynamics in the AL West to the longstanding arms race between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox back east.

Now that the Angels have added Albert Pujols and plucked C.J. Wilson off the Texas Rangers' roster, they have to wait and see what moves the Rangers answer with. Texas has until Jan. 18 to reach a deal with Japanese right-hander Yu Darvish and it's still hanging around on the Prince Fielder rumor boards.

But general manager Jerry Dipoto insists that what Texas does between now and mid-February won't impact what the Angels do.

"What we do is control our own environment and try to put the best team on the field within the parameters and dollars left to spend," Dipoto said. "I'm sure the Texas Rangers and other teams feel the same way. You go out and try to put the best team you can put together without being overly concerned with what other teams are doing."

Besides, Dipoto has indicated he doesn't have much more of owner Arte Moreno's money left to spend anyway.

Of course, things can change quickly once the season starts. If the rivalry between the Angels and Texas is as good as many people think it will be, Dipoto and Rangers GM Jon Daniels could be the difference-makers as the July 31 trade deadline approaches.

Dan Szymborski of ESPN's Baseball Think Factory breaks down the remaining needs of every team in the majors in this post. Here's what he says about the Angels, who he ranks 30th out of 30 in terms of pressing needs:

They got their holiday shopping done early, giving out $334.5 million to free agents this winter. That's more than the next three biggest spenders (Miami, Philadelphia, L.A. Dodgers) combined at $326 million. The AL West should be a whole lot more fun, but the Angels will probably have a quiet January and February.



Outside of stealing a third baseman like Taylor Green from the Brewers, the Angels will give Mark Trumbo every opportunity to try to handle the hot corner.

I agree that the Angels don't have much more business left to conduct, but I still think they'd like to add an experienced closer and give Jordan Walden the opportunity of learning while he pitches the eighth inning for a while. Also, I'm less optimistic about Trumbo being able to play third base regularly based on conversations with him in the past. Plus, they have spare parts they'll likely trade away, including Bobby Abreu and one of the utility infielders (Maicer Izturis or Alberto Callaspo), though it might make more sense to wait until spring training, when other teams' needs tend to become more acute because of injuries.

With the Angels and Rangers suddenly neck-and-neck, at least on paper, the future of the AL West could be decided by the next moves Texas makes.

The Angels are still on the lookout for bullpen help, but the bulk of their off-season activity was wrapped up before Christmas. As ESPNDallas colleague Richard Durrett reports here, it appears the Rangers are inching closer to tipping the balance in their favor once again. Japanese pitching sensation Yu Darvish is in Arlington visiting the Rangers' facilities, which might suggest he's closer to signing a contract.

Texas posted the highest bid with Darvish's Japanese team to secure exclusive negotiating rights, but must get a deal in place by Jan. 18.

If Darvish signs and transitions to U.S. baseball well, the Rangers' rotation won't be much worse than the Angels and they figure to score more runs and play comparable, if not better, defense. Plus, there are still six weeks left to conduct off-season business before spring training.