Small Tweaks Lead To Big Results For Angels’ Jack Kochanowicz

At 6-foot-7, 240 pounds, with a near triple-digit fastball, Jack Kochanowicz will never draw comparisons with Greg Maddux.

But Kochanowicz did something Maddux-like for Double-A Rocket City on May 20, throwing an 88-pitch complete game in which he gave up one run on four hits, struck out five and walked one in a 5-1 victory.

“You don’t see that in the minor leagues much anymore,” Angels minor league pitching coordinator Buddy Carlyle said. “There were a lot of quick outs, a lot of weak ground balls.”

Kochanowicz, who signed for $1.25 million as a third-round pick out of a high school just outside Philadelphia in 2019, is right where the Angels thought he would be—pitching at Double-A at age 22—even if it took longer than they had hoped.

The righthander didn’t pitch for an affiliate in 2019, and 2020 was wiped out by the pandemic. He spent two full seasons at Low-A Inland Empire, where his first two months of 2022 were lost to an oblique strain.

This spring, Kochanowicz lowered his arm slot to help him work more downhill and switched from a four-seam fastball to a two-seam sinking fastball. The changes seem to have turbo-charged his development.

Kochanowicz opened the season at High-A Tri-City but moved to Double-A after posting a 1.52 in five starts. With Rocket City he recorded a 1.93 ERA through two appearances to go with nine strikeouts and three walks in 14 innings.

His new two-seamer ranges between 96-99 mph and features sink and tail to his arm side.

Kochanowicz mixes his fastball with a high-spin, upper-70s curveball with two-plane break and an occasional 86-87 mph slider. He had a 65% strike percentage with his fastball and a 63% overall groundball rate through seven starts.

“He didn’t drop his arm angle a lot—it was just a little bit of a posture change to use his height as leverage, create more of a downhill angle with the ball and a little more movement on the two-seamer,” Carlyle said.

“The moment he did it, it felt comfortable, and it seemed more natural for him.”