Salt Lake Bees: Almost Angels — Trying to get back to the big leagues

The biggest problem for Wood — and Rodriguez and Brown — is that the Angels have been so successful the past few seasons that manager Mike Scioscia hasn't seen any need to make major changes.

Wood has been primarily a shortstop during his career, but the Angels have slick-fielding ex-Bee Erick Aybar filling that starting role right now. Aybar, who is only 25 himself, doesn't have Wood's power, but he hits for average (currently .309) and has good speed on the basepaths.

Wood has been playing some third base for Salt Lake since that may be his quickest route to the majors. But there the Angels have ex-Stinger and Scioscia-favorite Chone Figgins. Again, Wood has much better power, but Figgins is an outstanding table-setter with a .366 on base percentage and 17 stolen bases on the year.

"Our major league team is good. If it weren't, Brandon would have already been up there a long time ago," said Mitchell. "That's what happens when you get a major league team that is making the playoffs year-in and year-out. They are not going to make a whole lot of changes at the big-league level, especially if there is any doubt that it will help them."

So Wood is stuck in Salt Lake despite the fact he hit 31 homers for the Bees in only 103 games last season.

"He's just got to be patient, and I think he understands that," said Mitchell. "It's a hard thing, but he seems to be handling it a lot better than a lot of others might."

One of the big knocks on Wood is that he's all or nothing — he either hits it a long, long way or he strikes out. In 2006 in double-A Arkansas, for instance, he struck out a league-high 149 times. Last year he had a combined 147 strikeouts for the Bees and Angels with just a combined 49 walks.

This season, however, he has only 16 strikeouts so far with the Bees with 13 walks.

"He needs to continue to work on cutting down his strikeouts and learn to walk more — which he is doing," said Mitchell. "He also needs to keep his focus pitch-by-pitch, inning-by-inning and hour-by-hour during the game."

The Bees manager has also been instructed to tutor Wood in more "small ball" situations.

"He's going to be asked to hit-and-run and bunt and do that kind of stuff when he gets up there, so it's my job to get him accustomed to doing that here, even though for us he's a big home run hitter," said Mitchell. "Fans will think I'm crazy. 'Why are you bunting Wood?' But that's the way it is. ... It's our job to refine his overall game a little bit."