Angels beat Orioles behind strong start from Jack Kochanowicz
ANAHEIM — The Angels accomplished something that’s been rare this season.
They played the kind of baseball game that they’re supposed to play: getting a lead early and continuing to add on, with effective pitching throughout.
It added up to a 5-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday night.
The Angels (16-22) now have a chance on Sunday to win back-to-back series for the first time since early April.
They didn’t need any of the dramatic late-inning heroics from victories on Tuesday or Wednesday, because they made this the kind of boring victory that managers love. They got a two-run lead in the first and never really had to sweat.
Starter Jack Kochanowicz allowed one run in 5⅔ innings, and then four relievers closed it out.
For Kochanowicz, it represented a much-needed improvement after he’d posted a 6.84 ERA in his previous five starts.
“Just not putting too much pressure on myself at times,” Kochanowicz said. “You know, you try to be perfect and start thinking about the past outings and trying to get through this one being all perfect. Just got to calm down and trust my stuff.”
At his best, Kochanowicz pounds the strike zone, avoids walks and gets one ground ball after another. Recently, though, he’d been giving up hard contact and issuing walks. This time, he achieved two of three: avoiding hard contact and keeping the ball on the ground.
The Orioles had four hits against Kochanowicz, and three of them were ground ball singles. In all, he got nine groundouts, including two double plays.
“I still had the walks,” Kochanowicz said. “I definitely don’t want to do that, but working with (pitching coach Barry Enright) over the week, just figuring out some mechanical stuff, got me back to moving how I need to, just to get that extra velo.”
The only downside for him was that he issued four walks, and he threw a first-pitch ball to 12 of the 22 hitters he faced. That pushed his pitch count to 95 and kept him from finishing the sixth inning.
In contrast to recent games when the bullpen imploded, they got the job done this time.
Hector Neris entered with two on and two out in the sixth, and he struck out the only batter he faced. Neris, a veteran reliever who signed a minor-league deal with the Angels last month, has retired all six hitters he’s faced in his first three games. He’s likely forcing his way into high-leverage opportunities.
José Fermin and Ryan Zeferjahn worked the seventh and eighth. Brock Burke gave up a solo homer in the ninth, but then retired the last three to close it out.
The pitchers had some margin for error because the hitters produced five runs for the fifth time in the last seven games, after reaching that number just once in the previous 19 games.
One of the hotter players during the past week has been Jo Adell, who hit his third homer in the last five games on Saturday.
Adell said earlier in the week he’s trying to be more aggressive at the plate. Two of his homers, including the on Saturday, came on the first pitch.
Adell is 5 for 14 in his last five games, a stretch that has lifted his OPS for the season from .505 to .617.
“He’s starting to have better thought process at the plate, and if his thought process is better, the results are going to be better,” Manager Ron Washington said. “He was very aggressive tonight, and that’s what he has to stay, because they really haven’t been throwing him balls. They’ve been throwing him strikes, and you’ve just got to start getting them off that strike zone, and then they’ll start making some mistakes. So every time they’ve made a mistake the past three games that he’s played, he’s made them pay for it.”
Adell’s homer put the Angels up 3-0 in the fourth. Kyren Paris followed with a single, and then he scored when Matthew Lugo tripled off the fence in center. It was the first big league hit for Lugo, who made his major league debut a night earlier.
“I was hoping that it was gone,” Lugo said. “I didn’t get it full on the barrel, but I had a good backspin on the ball. I stayed inside of it, and I was hoping that it would get out, but I’ll take the triple.”