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.
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.
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.
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.
More to come on this story.
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