The Braves will promote top left-handed pitching prospect Sean Newcomb to start one of Saturday’s doubleheader games, reports Mark Bowman of MLB.com (on Twitter). Whether it’s a spot start or a potential audition for a long-term spot in the rotation — Bartolo Colon has struggled all season and was placed on the disabled list yesterday — Newcomb will be making his MLB debut this weekend. The lefty isn’t on Atlanta’s 40-man roster, though the Braves have an open spot for him.
Newcomb, 24 next week, was the Angels’ first-round pick (No. 15 overall) out of the University of Hartford back in 2014 and was traded to the Braves roughly 18 months later as the key piece in the Andrelton Simmons swap. He’s emerged as a consensus Top 100 prospect throughout the game, though his stock took somewhat of a hit with a so-so 2016 campaign in Double-A. After ranking among baseball’s top 25 or so prospects in the eyes of Baseball America and MLB.com, he entered the 2017 campaign ranked 78th and 80th on their respective lists. ESPN’s Keith Law ranked him 81st, while Baseball Prospectus remained a bit more bullish and ranked him 44th.
Through his first 57 innings with Triple-A Gwinnett this season, Newcomb has pitched to a strong 2.97 ERA with an outstanding 11.5 K/9 rate. However, he’s also averaged 5.2 walks per nine, continuing a troubling trend of control problems that has followed him throughout his professional career. Newcomb has averaged 4.8 walks per nine since being drafted, and in addition to walking 104 men through 197 2/3 frames across the past two seasons, he’s also hit eight batters and tossed nine wild pitches.
Scouting reports on Newcomb praise his considerable upside but are also wary of his control problems. Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com note that he sat 93-97 mph with his fastball last season and has at times touched 99-100 mph in the past — also praising his curveball as a plus offering and writing that his changeup is at least an average pitch. BA agreed with MLB.com’s assessment of Newcomb’s secondary offerings but pegged his fastball a couple miles per hour slower and also suggested that he needs to be more aggressive when he’s ahead in the count. Law, meanwhile, notes that Newcomb has durability but has yet to improve his command to the point where he can be considered likely to reach his ceiling as a No. 2 starter.
Control issues aside, the Braves are counting on Newcomb to serve as a long-term cog in their rotation following the departures of this offseason’s one-year stopgap acquisitions (Colon, R.A. Dickey and Jaime Garcia). Newcomb, along with Lucas Sims, Kolby Allard, Mike Soroka, Max Fried and Luiz Gohara, gives the Braves an enviable crop of well-regarded pitching prospects that currently sit in Double-A or higher. The hope, it seems, is that three of that bunch can slot into the rotation behind controllable right-handers Julio Teheran and Mike Foltynewicz to give Atlanta a rotation that is both sustainable and affordable for the next several years in the newly opened Sun Trust Park.
If Newcomb is brought to the Majors for good, he’ll accrue 114 days of big league service this season, which should put him just shy of Super Two eligibility moving forward. Assuming he misses out on Super Two status, he’d be arbitration-eligible following the 2020 season and would qualify for free agency following the 2023 campaign. Of course, it’s also certainly possible that this is merely a brief promotion to get his feet wet and that the Braves won’t fully commit a Major League rotation spot to Newcomb until later this season or even 2018.
Major league hitters are a lot less kind than AAA guys to pitchers with that kind of control problem. Could be ugly.
The one thing that this article doesn’t point out is why Newcomb was likely chosen over Sims. Newcomb has an 8 game stretch where he has allowed 3 ER or fewer with an ERA of 2.08 over that stretch of time. Also during those games batters only have an average of .178. Do it seems as if he has figured something out.
Still the control problems are something to watch.
Well he still had 12 walks in those 3 games, so I don’t know how much he’s figured out.
Have they officially committed to Wisler for the other game? I’m sure it will be but in a dreamers world I was quietly hoping they’d just promote them both on Saturday and let the better man survive, lol
Yes, Wisler was named starter of the other DH game. Not a bad decision for attendance either. Personally, I’d rather see Sims over Newcomb but we’ll see how it goes. I think Sims will be up at some point this year.
Good to hear. Time to load up on Mets bats for my fantasy team. Thank you!
The fact that there are plenty of mets bats on your waiver wire should be a telling sign.
Good thing that Mets lineup has about 3 ML hitters.
Sweet, looking forward to watching his first start.
he’s Jon Lester v2.0
I think Newcomb can actually throw the ball to 1st though.
Only thing that really matters is how well he can throw to home plate
Lester through the ball to first pretty well last week when he picked the guy off!!
He’s a worse version of a left handed Glasnow.
I wish you could convince other GMs of this….this is the first time I’ve heard this comp.
I do not understand this comp at all. What am I missing?
Lester is a good sized lefty who came up at at a comparable age and had swing and miss stuff though he also had control issues.
Lester and Newcomb’s AAA numbers are very similar, though not the walk rates, where Newcomb is quite a bit higher in less IP. Take that with a grain of salt, but I don’t get people saying he’s on the path to the bullpen because he has control issues. Same thing has been said about Folty (control issues, upper 90’s fb, destined for closer role), but he’s managed to piece it together – with some work still left to go admittedly.
Yea I’m not sure how you miss the comp mr arthur.
He begins his career against a good Mets offense. Rumors are Cespedes will be in the lineup for one of the twin bills on Saturday
A team that doesn’t hit lefties well though
Terry Collins start that rumor?
So the Mets will be fielding 4 major league hitters instead of 3?
He has flame-out written all over him! Like Ankiel. He could lose it at any point
Rooting for him tho.
I wonder if it’s a feasible plan to draft(and sign) ONLY pitchers with good control. And put a really good Defense on the field. Seems like a sound basis for a good franchise.
Tough to say what works and what doesn’t. With young arms, it’s encouraging to find guys that have a clean delivery and have a high pct of missed bats. Mike Soroka looks like someone that fits that bill, and Patrick Weigel to a lesser extent. Time will tell on Max Fried considering how injuries continue to interrupt any momentum in his development.
But there is a big difference between control and command. Control is getting it over the plate. Great for little leaguers. Not good enough for MLB pitchers. Command is hitting your spots and target. Otherwise your point is well taken. See the 2016 Cubs. It was no fluke that Lester and Hendricks had such great numbers with that too notch Cubs defense. It sure does help. Especially with a control/command guy like Hendricks.
Only thing I’m worried about is the walks, he has the stuff to be a really good pitcher, but it doesn’t help when you throw 100 pitches through 5 innings because you walked 4-5 guys.
I think Zach725 that Newcomb’s control is almost everyone’s concern. He has swing and miss stuff if he can find the strikezone.
How’s Ebby Calvin Laloosh for a comp. “It feels out there. I mean, it’s a major rush. I mean, it feels radical in kind of a tubular sort of way, but most of all, it feels out there.”