Sean Newcomb Shocked and Surprised Everyone in Spring Training. Will His Dominance Continue?

The Boston Red Sox have managed to acquire a large amount of pitching depth for their rotation this year, and early on in the season, they’re putting it to good use. With three potential starters opening the season on the injured list, the Red Sox have had to tap into that depth. However, one player no one thought was a serious option to make the team when spring training began was Sean Newcomb.

Newcomb signed a minor-league contract with an invitation to spring training in the middle of January, the left-hander being thought of as some Triple-A depth after spending most of the past two years in the minor leagues. Newcomb had been a reliable starter for the Atlanta Braves between 2017-18 before moving to the bullpen in 2019, where he was decent. Newcomb then returned to the rotation, struggling in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. 2021 saw him moved back to the bullpen where he remained for most of the next few years.

He didn’t last long in any of his stops, playing briefly with the Cubs before signing a minor league deal with the San Francisco Giants for the 2023 season. Before the season ended, he was traded to the Oakland Athletics, appearing in seven games for them. He would make seven more appearances for the A's in 2024 before getting released in July.

The Red Sox figured there was something still there, willing to take a chance on the left-hander with a minor league deal. Newcomb managed to make that decision look like a smart one.

Appearing in five games in spring training, four of them starts, Newcomb was phenomenal. Throwing 14 1/3 innings, he finished the spring with a 0.63 ERA while striking out 13 batters. His WHIP may have been even more impressive, sitting at 0.837.

Newcomb is known for his breaking balls having a ton of movement thanks to his ability to generate spin, but has had scattershot command in the past.

In his final start of the spring, Newcomb threw four and two-thirds innings against the Minnesota Twins. He stifled the Twins’ lineup, surrendering just four hits and one unearned run. But what might have been the most important stat was the fact he surrendered zero walks. Across the entire spring, he only walked three batters.

In that particular start, Newcomb threw 47 pitches, relying mainly on his slider and changeup, which he threw a combined 28 times. The shift in focus for his pitch mix is interesting; throwing his slider for 34% of his pitches and his changeup for 25.5% goes against his past usage of it. The 2023 and 2024 seasons will be ignored due to his lack of usage, but in 20 games in 2022, he threw his slider for only one percent of his pitches, the same as his changeup. In fact, between his four-seamer and cutter, his two fastballs made up 81% of his pitches for the season.

Even in his incredibly short 2024 season, Newcomb did not throw a single slider and only used his changeup four percent of the time, while his fastball was thrown 47% of the time. On March 20th, he only threw his four-seamer on 12.8% of his pitches. A change in pitch philosophy may prove to be key for Newcomb, as a reliance on his four-seamer could be ineffective for him. In his spring outing, his fastball averaged only 89.6 mph, not a big difference from his slider or changeup as they averaged 85.5 mph and 88.1 mph, respectively. Though, his fastball may play closer to his old cutter instead based on its movement and speed during that March 20th start. Regardless, he cannot try to pitch like he has a dominating fastball — there is no way he could survive if he tried to rely on it. Even at his best, Newcomb's fastball only averaged around 93 mph. 

With a bigger reliance on movement, Newcomb may be able to make hay as a pitch-to-contact type, as he does not get many whiffs. Despite striking out three batters, he only generated two whiffs in the game, and his Contact% throughout the spring was 82.4%, meaning batters managed to make contact on nearly 83% of his pitches that were swung at. His percentage for strikes that were swung at and missed was only 8.7%. With the inherent movement of his pitches, the Red Sox may look for him to rely heavily on limiting hard contact. While high velocity is important in today’s game, Newcomb could be one of a rare breed to make it work with limited gas (i.e, the Kyle Hendricks model).

Newcomb does not generate many swings with his pitches and does not throw many first pitch strikes. It’s a dangerous combination for a starter, especially one with control issues in the past. Newcomb’s amount of contact allowed can be mitigated by embracing his tendency as a ground-ball pitcher. For his career, he’s allowed ground balls at a 43.1% rate. However, in spring training, he saw that increase to 55.6%, while his fly ball rate sat at just 30.6%, a decrease from his career average of 35.5%. With an infield defense like the Red Sox have, Newcomb could get away with hard contact if it remains on the ground. It’ll be his ability to limit extra-base hits that will determine his season.

The left-hander could possibly only be in Boston for a start or two, but if he manages to pitch well enough in those outings, it could lead to a difficult decision to keep him in the rotation, move him to the bullpen, or to designate him for assignment and hope they can sneak him down to Worcester. The best case scenario is that Newcomb creates that conversation, the worst case being that he struggles in his couple of starts and is designated for assignment.

It's obvious that Newcomb won’t make or break the season, but the fact he looked this good in spring training without being a high strikeout pitcher makes you wonder if the Red Sox pitching lab may have unlocked something for him, or if he just got extremely lucky through the entire spring. Either way, as someone born and raised in Massachusetts, you can’t help but root for Newcomb to perform well in Boston.