"The Angels saw an awful lot of Dan Haren during his three seasons in Oakland — enough to know that, one day, he would be the kind of pitcher they'd want at the top of their rotation.

Yet the team hardly seemed surprised when Haren wheeled his white Maserati into the players' parking lot for the opening of spring training and proclaimed he's not that guy anymore.

"I'm a completely different pitcher than I was in Oakland," he says. "When I was over there, I threw much harder. I didn't throw a cut fastball. Now I've kind of reinvented myself.

"You can't just go out there and throw up the same stuff every year. Everyone has to adjust along the way."

And as it turns out, adjusting is something the 30-year-old Haren is good at. In an eight-year big league career, he has played for four teams, seven managers and five pitching coaches, bouncing between the National and American leagues twice and eventually coming to the Angels from the Arizona Diamondbacks in a trade last July.

"He's evolved," is how Angels Manager Mike Scioscia puts it. "He's evolved into more of a pitcher. Back then, he relied more on just dynamic stuff. Mentally, he's as tough as any pitcher I've seen."

Along the way his strikeouts have gone up, his walks have gone down and he has made three All-Star teams. That's a track record Angels pitching coach Mike Butcher doesn't plan to mess with.

"When you have a veteran-type pitcher, you kind of go off what he does and what works for him the best," Butcher says. "We just try to adapt to every player that comes in here. And with Dan, he communicates very well."

Butcher became acquainted with Haren during the final two months of last season, when the right-hander was 5-4 with a 2.87 earned-run average in 14 starts for the Angels. The Arizona neighbors then added to that over the winter, talking frequently and getting together once for a game of catch."