Immediately after Sean Newcomb’s last start, he and pitching coach Chuck Hernandez started to work on fixing command issues.
Newcomb, who walked seven of the 25 batters he faced against the Dodgers, has struggled to find the strike zone in his past five outings after starting his big league career strongly.
The left-hander has always had issues with walks. In multiple stints throughout the minors since 2015, Newcomb never walked fewer than 4.5 batters per nine innings. After walking 22 in his past 25 innings, spanning five starts, Newcomb’s rate is up to 5.47.
“Not too much different than what I’ve been saying … just kind of staying aggressive and one of my things is staying on line through the zone instead of spinning off at the end,” Newcomb said about what he’s been working on. “That’s really all that’s been affecting my command a little bit, but it’s something that’s easy to fix and something we’ve been working on. It’s a small mechanical adjustment. But with 60 feet for the ball to go, one little misdirection can make it go pretty big at the other end.”
The opposing lineups Newcomb has faced haven’t helped. Four of his past six starts have come against the three teams with the highest OPS in baseball — twice against the Dodgers, the Nationals and the Astros. Houston and Washington are first and second in runs scored, while the Dodgers are fifth. One of his other two starts took place against the Cubs, who are 16-7 since the All-Star break and came into the Braves series having scored 27 runs in a three-game set against Baltimore.
“It was a good test,” Newcomb said. “I mean it was cool to kind of face some of the best hitters right now and kind of see how my stuff played against them when I was in the zone. And just knowing I can get some of those guys out is a good confidence booster and set it up good to go into these last couple months. Obviously, I had some slip-ups here and there, but overall I feel that my stuff played well against them and that I can keep doing that.”
After his call-up, Newcomb started with four starts against teams that didn’t provide the test he faced recently. Responding by going at least six innings in each outing, Newcomb showed impressive control, walking eight batters in 24 1/3 innings. As his command has faltered, so has his ground-ball rate, which points to the inability to keep the ball down in the zone.
Over Newcomb’s first five starts, his ground-ball rate sat at nearly 50 percent — a number higher than what he typically produced in the minors. Since then, that rate has plummeted to 40 percent for the season. Against Los Angeles, he generated zero ground balls, while three of the four starts before that finished at less than 33 percent.
Observing one of the more experienced pitchers in baseball, Newcomb has taken note of R.A. Dickey’s preparation and work ethic between starts as something he can learn from.
“Yeah, maybe when R.A. throws it’s a little different, but just watching him compete is something I can take advice from to just kind of see how he goes about it,” Newcomb said. “I think he’s mad at himself if he doesn’t go at least into the seventh inning, so that’s definitely something to admire and strive for.”
Newcomb has averaged fewer than five innings per start in his past six outings. It’s taken him 517 pitches to get through his past 25 innings, while the previous 27 2/3 innings took him 465 pitches. Still, Brian Snitker is confident that the work put in with Hernandez and experience will get Newcomb headed back in the right direction.
“I know Chuck was working on delivery stuff,” Snitker said. “They went right to work the day after comparing things … the subtle things I think more than anything huge. Every time he goes out there, he’s going to find something he’s going to learn. The more we run them out there, the better they’re going to be.”
