Braves starting pitcher, Sean Newcomb, was one pitch away from a no-no…then his no-no was made public on social media
The Atlanta Braves sent 25-year-old lefty, Sean Newcomb, to the mound on Sunday to face one of the best team in the National League…the LA Dodgers. A team that has beaten the Braves in the first three games of this four game series. Newcomb was our last chance to not be swept.
Well, he pitched a dandy! He threw 134 pitches, 81 of those for strikes, went 8.2 innings, one walk and eight strikeouts. He came extremely close…one pitch away…from throwing a no-hitter against the Dodgers. It would have been a first for the Braves since 1994. For a recap of the game, check out what Alan posted a little while ago.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to complete that feat as Chris Taylor hit a 2-2 fastball right between the diving Johan Camargo and Dansby Swanson. The game ended up 4-1 after Dan Winkler gave up another single to Manny Machado to score Taylor.
With that victory, Newcomb improved to 10-5 for the season and now holds a 3.23 ERA for the 2018 season. In 119.2 innings pitched, opposing hitters are batting .204 and he has a 1.20 WHIP. He has 110 strikeouts and 57 walks for the season.
It was fantastic to watch this young kid throughout this game. He was still humming a 95mph fastball in the 9th inning. He battled and you could really tell he was determined to finish off that game.
Newcomb looks like he’s a pitcher that belongs in the Braves rotation now and for the future. We went through times where this didn’t look like the case, but he’s really showing signs that he’s going to be something special.
Following the game and being almost on top of the world, we saw social media start blowing up about Newcomb “deleting tweets”. Curious, I started clicking around and found this dude…@NatsSquid
This dude has dug up some tweets from 2011 and 2012 that Newcomb had posted that are extremely insensitive, homophobic and racial slurs. Sean was a senior in high school when he posted and it sounds like he was around 18 or 19 years old. I will not post them on our site, but you can find from the user name above if you need to see what Sean said.
This same type of thing just happened during the 2018 MLB All-Star game to Brewers relief pitcher Josh Hader. Some old tweets surfaced that Hader posted when he was 17-years-old. The MLB ordered Harder to go through a sensitivity training program. The Milwaukee pitcher did appologize right after the game and the MLB didn’t fine or punish him any further.
It sounds like Newcomb was on his phone checking all the congratulatory tweets and then these popped up. He quickly asked if the Braves could open back up the media to get ahead of this. Newcomb made this statement around 5:45 on Sunday afternoon.
Fox Sports Kelsey Wingert was on top of this story…
Newcomb went on to tell the media…“I felt that it would be good to address it right away and just let people know that I meant nothing by it. I didn’t mean to offend anybody and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. I’ll be smarter.”
The Braves posted a response to this situation on twitter….
No word from the MLB yet on what they’ll do with this situation.