"Scott Kazmir is searching.

The pitch he used to become baseball's top strikeout pitcher in 2007, the slider, has gone missing, and every time Kazmir takes the mound for the Angels, he knows he's doing it without one of his best pitches.

"It's tough. It's very frustrating. If I could get the slider back, the sky's the limit," Kazmir said. "I'd have a changeup that would dive away from righties and have something coming in to righties. It'd help me against lefties. If I could spin it right, I could put it in the dirt or I could throw it for a strike."

But that's a very big "if" right now.

Kazmir has thrown over 1,500 pitches this season. 179 of those pitches have been sliders. And, unfortunately for him, not too many have felt like they were his best slider.

"There's only been a couple of times where it's felt like, 'it's back," Kazmir said. "Really, it's been just a handful."

When the pitch was working, like it was in 2007 when Kazmir led the American League with 239 strikeouts, it was devastating.

"It was huge. I could throw it for a strike or I could back-foot a guy for a strikeout," he said. "It's a big part of my game."

But the confidence in the pitch isn't the same and hasn't been for some time.

Pitching coach Mike Butcher said he's spoken with Kazmir about locating his fastball better and throwing the slider in more volume, hoping that Kazmir can find some rhythm with the pitch.

"It's there," Butcher said. "It's just a matter of bringing it out into the game."

Butcher said he'd like to see Kazmir throw as much as four times as many sliders each start. In seven of Kazmir's 15 starts this season, he's thrown less than 10 sliders."