Angels’ Jack Kochanowicz is going up by keeping his sinker down

ANAHEIM — Last spring, Jack Kochanowicz realized his career was at a crossroads.

A former third-round draft pick, Kochanowicz had spent the previous two seasons in Class-A, getting knocked around to the tune of a 6.13 ERA.

“I kind of just decided, OK, what I’m doing is not working,” Kochanowicz recalled. “I was just accepting that I need to make some changes.”

There were two main changes Kochanowicz made that spring. He fully committed to throwing a sinker instead of the four-seam fastball he’d brought into pro baseball. He also changed his posture, resulting in a slightly lower release point.

The latter suddenly made his sinker do things it had not done.

“It just gave me a different type of movement,” Kochanowicz said. “Once I saw that, I was like OK, I can trust this. I can roll with this.”

He’s rolled with it all the way to the major leagues. In less than two seasons, Kochanowicz has changed the path of his career.

The 23-year-old right-hander has started six games in the majors this season. After two rough outings in July, he returned to the majors in August with another slight adjustment, and he’s posted a 2.45 ERA in his last four starts.

He’s the only Angels pitcher this season to have four straight quality starts: at least six innings and three earned runs or fewer. If he can do it again on Thursday in Texas, he’ll be the first Angels pitcher since 2018 to have five in a row. He’d be the first Angels rookie pitcher to have five in a row since Andrew Heaney in 2015.

“I think every start you’re seeing some confidence build,” General Manager Perry Minasian said. “He’s doing a better job of simplifying things. For a pitcher, strike one is key. Over the last three or four starts you’re seeing a lot more strike one than ball one. Is he where he needs to be yet? Not necessarily. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement but it’s fun watching the development of that. I think he’s someone who can be a part of the rotation for a long time.”

Manager Ron Washington said he sees a new pitcher since that rough start in July.

“He’s been pounding the strike zone with a lot more consistency,” Washington said. “He’s had some success. When you have success, it fuels confidence. We don’t want him to change anything. We just want him to keep pounding the zone with that good sinker he’s got. Keep mixing in his offspeed pitches. Just keep doing what he’s doing.”

The optimistic talk about Kochanowicz might still be difficult to buy for many skeptical Angels fans who have been burned by unreached potential of past prospects.

Cynicism stems from the fact that Kochanowicz wasn’t very good early in his pro career. Second, he’s successful without racking up strikeouts. Modern baseball analytics have programmed many of us to believe that success without strikeouts is unsustainable.

On the first point, it’s worth looking back at how his career began.

Kochanowicz, who is from suburban Philadelphia, was a third-round pick out of high school in 2019. He signed for $1.25 million, around double the number for his slot.

Back then, though, former GM Billy Eppler had many of the Angels pitchers sit out the minor league season immediately after the draft. The idea was to give their arms a break while getting them acclimated, cleaning up their mechanics, working on their fitness, etc.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the next year, so that season was lost too. Kochanowicz didn’t finally get to pitch in a minor league game until 2021, nearly two years after he was drafted.

And by then, something was gone.

“COVID happened,” he said. “After I stopped competition for a while, I came back and that four-seamer didn’t have the same hop that I wanted.”

Kochanowicz said he felt the same in workouts, but when he was in games, he just couldn’t get hitters to swing and miss at his four-seam fastball. He struggled at Class-A Inland Empire in 2021 and 2022. He began to experiment with a sinker, which is a fastball thrown with the fingers on two seams. It still didn’t work that well.

It wasn’t until spring training in 2023 that the Angels suggested the posture change that was key to the sinker he now throws.

Kochanowicz, who is 6-foot-7, throws the sinker “at a hard down angle,” catcher Matt Thaiss said. It also has “lots of life,” Thaiss said. He averages 96 mph on the pitch.

“When he throws that sinker at the bottom of the zone, it’s a turbo sinker with a lot of power behind it,” Thaiss said. “You can get the bat to it, but it’s usually going to go straight into the ground.”

During those July games, Kochanowicz didn’t really understand what part of the zone the sinker played the best. When he came back in August, he knew.

“Obviously you want to throw strikes, but as a guy who throws a lot of fastballs, a lot of sinkers, when you’re not throwing them in the right spot, it can get pretty bad pretty quick,” Kochanowicz said. “So I just kind of learned my way around that. I feel like I’ve honed in those zones I can really live in.”

Kochanowicz’s ground ball rate of 58% is one of the best in the majors. That’s allowed him to get quick outs – without strikeouts – and to get double plays when he does get into a jam. The Angels have have already turned nine double plays behind him in 32⅔ innings.

The Angels have gotten a double play 29% of the time when there’s a runner at first and less than two outs. The major league average is 10%.

The question now is whether he can sustain it his success while striking out just 9% of hitters. The major league average is 22%.

“We’ve seen sinker ballers in the past pitch a long time and have really good careers,” Minasian said. “For us, it’s outs. We’re looking for out-getters. I’ve talked about that a ton. We’re looking for outs. And he has the ability to get outs early in counts, which allows him to manage his pitch count and pitch deep in games, which is really important in today’s game. To have a starter get six and get into the seventh inning is worth its weight in gold.”

Kochanowicz said his confidence has climbed during these last four starts. He knows he’s still got to improve his breaking pitches, but mostly it’s just about continuing to be sharp with the location on the sinker he’s throwing 70% of the time.

“It feels great,” he said. “It’s just continuing to trust it. Continuing to trust that, if I’m down in the zone with it, it’s going to work.”

UP NEXT

Dodgers (TBD) at Angels (LHP Reid Detmers, 3-6, 6.14 ERA), Tuesday, 6:38 p.m., Bally Sports West, 830 AM