2019 MLB Season: Six Relievers to Believe in

2019 MLB Season: Six Relievers to Believe in

Sean Newcomb, Atlanta Braves

You’ve probably heard of Sean Newcomb by now. While prospect nuts slobber over the Braves collection of young arms, Newcomb has been the one on display tempering expectations.

He flunked out of the rotation this year, pushed to a bullpen that has struggled to lock down wins for most of the 2019 MLB season. The newcomers have taken the brunt of the criticism lately, but Newcomb and tag-team partner Luke Jackson were the scapegoats for most of the year.

Expectations for Newcomb were bloated from the jump due to his association with the rest of Atlanta’s high-end arms, but he also made his own bed with solid showings in 2017 and 2018. As a mostly full-time starter last year, Newcomb took 30 turns on the rubber, going 12-9 with a 3.90 ERA/4.14 FIP across a solid-for-this-era 164 innings.

Neither Baseball-Reference (1.7 bWAR) nor Fangraphs (1.9 fWAR) was in love with Newcomb’s 2018, putting a little extra pressure on the big lefty to up his game this season.

Instead, after three blah starts, the Braves moved him to the pen at the beginning of May and he’s been there ever since. To his credit, he wasn’t bad as a starter. The Braves won all three of his starts, and he held a 4.38 ERA when they made the move. Still, twice he didn’t make it past four innings, and if this was the plan all along (very possible), the need in the pen made the move easy for ownership.

While the team cycled through closers, Newcomb never really got the opportunity to anchor the pen, and a couple of high-profile slip-ups marred what’s otherwise been a decent showing.

When your team acquires three new potential closers at the trade deadline, there’s definitely the feeling that nobody in the pen had been doing a good job. Newcomb’s not been put out to pasture. He’s still out there, and he’ll remain an important left-handed arm for Atlanta down the stretch.

Since joining the bullpen in May, Newcomb has made 35 appearances for 40 2/3 innings with a 2.66 ERA. Opponents are batting .236/.292/.376 – and he’s getting more comfortable out there. With twelves holds and one save to just one blown save, Newcomb has a chance to really impact the Braves playoff run when the bullpen becomes all the more important.

His stuff hasn’t played up much, if at all, in shorter bursts, but the contributions are there. In less than a third of the innings, he pitched last year, by WAR he’s putting together a more efficient season (0.8 bWAR, 0.7 fWAR). As I’ve said at least once already, bullpens matter only as much as they can carry a team through the high-leverage moments, so while the efficiency from Newcomb is fine, his mettle will be tested in the moments yet to come. For those, tune back in this October.