"Torii Hunter answers exactly how you would expect him to.

"No, I haven't," he said when asked if maybe - just maybe - he had lost a step in speed and quickness this year.

"I haven't."

If Hunter is slowing down at age 35, the evidence might be in his 42 percent success rate on stolen base attempts (9 of 21). His 12 times thrown out trying to steal (including five at third base) ties him for eighth in the majors. Everyone ahead of him on that list has at least twice as many successful steal attempts as Hunter.

It might be in the handful of times he has been thrown out on the bases (like Tuesday in Cleveland when he tried to score from first on a double to left field by Hideki Matsui and was thrown out at home) or the 20 times he has hit into double plays (just three short of his career high).

But Angels manager Mike Scioscia also denies that Hunter has slowed down in the past year or two, explaining the number of times he has run into outs as "a function of an offense stuck in the mud" and Hunter trying to get it unstuck with aggressive baserunning.

"There have been some times this year where he has run into some outs trying to force things," Scioscia said. "But that has nothing to do with his speed. His times are what we'd expect them to be from what we've seen the past couple years.

"(Pushing things on the bases) is part of the internal competitive mechanism Torii has that says, 'We've got to get after it. We've got to make something happen.' ... He's created plenty of runs for us. You only talk about it when it doesn't work. There's a lot he's done for us when it has worked.""