Toronto turned a tight game into a rout Saturday, scoring seven times in the fifth inning and rolling past the Angels 14-1. The burst ended Jack Kochanowicz’s afternoon and left Anaheim with a 15-25 record.
Kochanowicz had held the Blue Jays to one run through four innings, but the fifth unraveled fast. He walked Addison Barger to open the frame, then Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Kazuma Okamoto followed with soft singles. Jesus Sanchez then sent a pop fly down the left-field line that dropped between Josh Lowe, Yoán Moncada and Zach Neto, and Daulton Varsho added a comebacker that Kochanowicz threw badly to first for an error. Ernie Clement followed with a hard ground ball that skipped past Moncada and was ruled a hit, and Mitch Farris later gave up a three-run homer to Brandon Valenzuela, Toronto’s No. 9 hitter, to finish the seven-run inning.
Kochanowicz was charged with seven runs, six earned, in four innings. He had not struck out anyone through those first four frames, a stark turn for a pitcher whose 17% strikeout rate coming into the game had already trailed the major-league average of 22%. His 14% strikeout rate last year was low as well, and he had been leaning on weak contact to stay afloat with opponents batting.225 on balls in play against him, well below the.290 major-league average.
Afterward, Kochanowicz did not hide how little worked. He said it was not just the swing-and-miss stuff, but that everything was wrong and his control was not really there. He added that there was too much traffic all game and that the outing simply was not refined, though he said he could only go back, throw a good bullpen this week and try to have a better one next week.
Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said the ball seemed to find holes all afternoon, and that the Blue Jays did a good job of putting the ball in play. He said Kochanowicz has actually been getting a lot of swing and miss lately, but that Toronto was a team that does not strike out much and found openings on Saturday. The game fit that pattern exactly: a staff that needed better execution ran into a lineup that kept putting pressure on every pitch, and the result was a loss that deepened a rough stretch for the Angels.
The one inning changed everything. It also underlined the strain on Kochanowicz’s profile: when the strikeouts do not come and the balls in play keep falling, the margin disappears quickly.
