The Atlanta Braves’ Sean Newcomb and His New Role
By Clint Manry
No one ever said Sean Newcomb had to be a starting pitcher. Its been over a month since he last made a start for the Braves, so is the bullpen a good fit for him?
On a recent Thursday (May 23), Ben Clemens of Fangraphs wrote a piece regarding starting pitchers and when and how to tell if it’s the right time to convert a starter to a reliever. As a follower of the Atlanta Braves, I was immediately interested.
There’s been write-ups covering this topic before, but I found Clemens’ research and reasoning very logical. He analyzed a few different pitching aspects that can help make a reasonable determination on whether or not a conversion is necessary or not.
The reason this editorial is important to the Braves is because Clemens included a pitcher that we all know very well, Sean Newcomb. In fact, Newcomb was one of the primary pitchers in his exercise.
Before I get into the metrics that Clemens used for deciding if a starter should be moved to the bullpen, let me set this up and look at the before and after results regarding Newcomb and his new role.
As we all know, after some poor pitching to kick off the 2019 season and some rough stints in 2018, the Braves sent Newcomb down to Gwinnett to get things figured out.
The move came the day after Newcomb’s 1.1-inning start against the Mets (April 13), where the righty only faced 10 batters and gave up four runs across 5 hits. Newcomb failed to strike out a single Mets hitter and walked two.
Looking at it now, the optioning of Newcomb looked to be an extremely smart move, as he immediately made very positive strides once on a Triple-A mound.
To gain a bit of perspective, here’s Newcomb’s pitching line as a starter this season, before being sent down. He made three starts, facing the Cubs, Marlins and Mets:
12.1 IP, 15 H, 6 ER, 8 BB, 5 K
As you see by his line, Newcomb just hasn’t been very effective as a starting pitcher so far this season, and it actually should have been worse, save for some slick fielding and straight-up luck against the Cubs.
A 9.85 ERA isn’t going to cut it, though there’s no guarantee that he wouldn’t have turned things around with more starts.
I’m sure most Braves fans already knew Newcomb’s results were pretty bad in those three starts, but to finish this comparison, let’s look at his results in the majors since he’s been recalled to the Braves, with his first relief appearance being on May 6, and his latest as of the end of May.
12 IP, 11 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 12 K
That line equals a sweet 1.50 ERA and a batting average against of .229. Obviously Newcomb has had some success in his new role, eh?
This new role and newfound success is exactly what I want to look at, and is why Clemens’ article could possibly be a great sample piece to use in the future when trying to decide if a starting pitcher needs to be utilized in a different role for their team.
There’s no perfect way to decide if a change is needed, and with the volatility of the various stats and metrics that are commonly used — a proper determination can be extremely challenging to come up with.
However, it can be very interesting to discover certain correlations that pop up with some of the various metrics used these days.
So let’s breakdown Clemens’ report!