Spring training battle: How Jack Kochanowicz can win the Angels' fifth starter role

There's more than one way to skin a cat. There's a reason this old adage has been around long enough to become a cliché. For Angels' starter Jack Kochanowicz the adage holds a lot of truth. Kochanowicz, 24, put up some impressive results last season in an albeit limited sample. The imposing, 6-foot-7 right-hander made 11 starts and logged 65.1 innings while posting a 3.99 ERA after making the jump straight from AA to the majors.

While one would presume that performance would give him a leg up on lefty Reid Detmers and his 6.70 ERA last season, it isn't quite as cut and dry. The Athletic's Sam Blum projects Detmers will win the job while MLB.com's Rhett Bollinger suggests that Kochanowicz is actually the favorite.

Further muddying the waters, top prospect Caden Dana, Chase Silseth, and a host of other young arms will also be vying for the opportunity. In other words, if Kochanowicz is going to win the job, he's really going to have to earn it.

One fatal flaw holds back Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz

Remember those cats we were skinning earlier? Well, the pathway to success as a pitcher in the major leagues has increasingly become via the strikeout. Especially in the modern game, pitchers give way to bullpens much earlier canceling out the need to pitch to contact in order to save energy and go deep in games, the strikeout has become the modus operandi.

Of course, there are plenty of successful pitchers who don't strike out a ton of hitters. For example, Kochanowicz's new teammate, Kyle Hendricks, won the ERA crown back in 2016 and has never been known as a strikeout artist averaging just 7.17 K/9 for his career.

For Kochanowicz, 7.17 K/9 is a dream. Despite featuring a sinker that averaged 95.8 miles per hour, he averaged just 3.44 K/9 which was the worst mark of all 170 starters who pitched 50 innings or more in 2024.

There are things to like about his performance too. He walked just 1.38 batters per nine, generated ground balls a whopping 57% of the time, and kept the ball in the yard surrendering just 0.96 HR/9. The lack of strikeouts, however, just can't be ignored. His peripherals indicated that he benefitted from a lot of luck as his xERA was 4.97 and his FIP was 4.62, highlighting that his performance wasn't as good as the results make it seem.

Even more significant, this seems to be an issue of repertoire. Kochanowicz through his sinker an eye-popping 72% of the time, adding in a curveball just 18% of the time and a four-seam fastball a minuscule 6% of the time. This led to a lot of predictability and very few whiffs.

Furthermore, his curveball wasn't very effective when he did use it as the pitch was worth -1.7 runs last year according to Statcast. Almost everything from the sinker to the curve is down in the zone doing little to change hitters' eye level.

This spring he's going to have to show an improved pitch mix. One would think with the mid-to-high 90s velocity he features on his sinker he could unlock even more with his four-seamer, and use it more frequently up in the zone to at least set up his other pitches.

He's also going to have to generate more whiffs on his curve or come up with another breaking ball offering entirely. Whatever he does, he doesn't need to become an untouchable K-machine, but he will need to balance his pitch-to-contact strategy with a few more strikeouts in order to prove to be a sustainable option as the fifth starter.

His starts will be must-see TV this spring as we'll all be glued to see if he can revamp his arsenal and generate the necessary whiffs to be successful. Until he can consistently do this he'll be at a disadvantage against the rest of his competition.

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