Jack Kochanowicz gets another shot at the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday night, with the Angels right-hander scheduled to face Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the second game of a three-game set. The Dodgers arrived with a 4-0 record against their neighbors this season and a chance to clinch the series after Friday’s 1-0 win on Freddie Freeman’s walk-off home run.
For Kochanowicz, the assignment comes with the kind of numbers that make the matchup easy to frame and harder to survive. He entered with a 5.23 ERA across 12 starts, along with 46 strikeouts and 35 walks in 63.2 innings, and he had already been hit hard by Los Angeles in mid-May when he gave up six runs on seven hits over six innings in a 6-0 Angels loss. Andy Pages, Max Muncy and Teoscar Hernández all homered that night, a reminder of how quickly the Dodgers can turn one mistake into a crooked inning.
Yamamoto brings the opposite form into the game. He was set to start for the Dodgers with a 2.86 ERA, 69 strikeouts and 15 walks in 69.1 innings this season, and he had allowed just two runs over 19.1 innings across his last three starts. That leaves Kochanowicz chasing more than a better line score; he is trying to show he can keep this lineup from turning one start into a repeat of May.
The timing matters because the Dodgers are not just trying to win a game, they are trying to take the series and move to 5-0 against the Angels this season. Kochanowicz does not need a perfect outing to change the conversation, but after what happened in mid-May, anything short of a steady start will read as another step backward.
