Atlanta Braves midday chop: Newcomb and Foltynewicz most improved
By Fred Owens
Most improved pitchers
The folks at Statcast™ lab combine a variety of metrics to neutralize park and defense and show what they believe provides the truest picture how a pitcher’s performed using xwOBA (expected OBA.)
Mike Petriello posted a list of MLB’s ten most improved pitchers yesterday based on that stat and two Atlanta Braves were on it; Sean Newcomb and Mike Foltynewicz.
Newcomb’s .281 xwOBA ranked seventh because he’s getting more ground ball as a result of his increased use of the changeup.
Sean Newcomb has been so good this year, but interestingly, he's not really throwing more strikes. He is, however, throwing way more changeups. More than he threw in all of 2017, in 26 fewer innings. pic.twitter.com/8NS24KbKbE
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) June 11, 2018
He’s also ranks 13th on Statcast’s list of pitchers with the fewest hard hit pitches.
Folty’s .296 xwOBA placed him tenth on the list because he bumped his K rate to 29% and cut his HR/9 rate to 0.57, down from 1.19 last year.
Mike Foltynewicz keeps upping his slider usage, up to 27% this year.
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) June 11, 2018
He's allowing a .116/.143/.189 line against it, so, yes, that makes sense. pic.twitter.com/gj9KaLFNbo
Unrelated but sort of nearly almost related; Nick Markakis just missed the Statcast labs ten most improved hitters list.
As I suspected, Brandon McCarthy starts tomorrow instead of Julio Teheran.
McCarthy completed his normal between-starts bullpen session yesterday. So, I'd expect he'll start tomorrow's game against the Padres. This would set up Newcomb to start with an extra day of rest on Saturday. Teheran could then come off the DL to start Sunday.
— Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) June 14, 2018
That’s a wrap
Lots of good things happening for the Atlanta Braves these days. When Ronald Acuna returns – maybe a week from Friday – the lineup gets stronger. That’s just in time for a long tough stretch of games when the Braves need to be playing their best.
Hopefully Folty’s triceps issue vanishes in a puff of smoke from a 97 mph heater and Julio Teheran remembers how to throw more than 88 mph.
Meanwhile the trade market’s heating up. I’ll have more on that later today.