ATLANTA — The last time Sean Newcomb took the mound against the Dodgers at SunTrust Park, Los Angeles’ offense looked as befuddled as it had all season.
This time, with the Braves’ season on the line and the Dodgers one win away from their third consecutive trip to the National League Championship Series, manager Dave Roberts feels his team is as prepared as ever to prevent that from happening again.
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The move was a rash one from Atlanta, a last-ditch effort to gain an advantage, scrapping the right-handed Kevin Gausman from a Game 3 start and instead opting for the left-handed Newcomb, who already threw two scoreless innings in Game 1 of the series at Dodger Stadium.
“The situation is kind of dire right now,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “We need to win. And not that Gausman doesn’t give us that opportunity. We like how Newcomb matches up with them and the success that he’s had against the Dodgers this year.”
That success came over one afternoon in July, when the Dodgers couldn’t scrounge together a hit off the 25-year-old left-hander Newcomb until they were down to their final out, with a single from Chris Taylor and an RBI from a newly acquired Manny Machado the lone damage done to prevent a shutout and no-hitter. Given that the Braves announced the decision on Saturday afternoon, with the Dodgers already on their cross-country team charter to Atlanta, Roberts said he hasn’t had much of an opportunity to review that start in detail.
Newcomb’s success was not in his deceptiveness of guile, but instead on a reliance on pure ability. Of Newcomb’s 134 pitches that afternoon, 102 were fastballs, ranging in velocity between 91 and 96 mph. For as predictable as his pitch mix was, it was effective, drawing 12 whiffs on his four-seamer alone and spotting 17 others for strikes while missing bats on a pair of curveballs.
“I just recall missing a lot of bats,” Roberts said. “It was the fastball. And I just think it’s one of those things that you just don’t know a pitcher and you really don’t know the life that it might have, and so it kind of snuck up on us a little bit. And I think he was pitching at 95, 96 the entire day. So really dominated us that day.”
The Dodgers entered that day with a 94 wRC+ against left-handed pitching as a team, ranking below the league average and leaving themselves vulnerable — Yasiel Puig and Kiké Hernández, two of their most reliable contributors against lefties, had gotten out to a rough start to their seasons and were below-average against lefties. (Hernández has since bounced back to a 113 wRC+ against lefties, while Puig has not.)
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“Definitely going to use that to my advantage,” Newcomb said. “And they can use that to their advantage too because they’ve seen me throw a lot of pitches. So it’s going to go both ways. Go out there and use my strengths and attack them.”
But this is a different lineup. The acquisitions of Machado, Brian Dozier and, at the end of August, David Freese were aimed to combat left-handed pitching, and have allowed Roberts to constantly put out lineups that give him the platoon advantage. They also re-added Justin Turner, who missed time immediately after the All-Star break with a groin injury. Since September, when the “platoon lineups” became a regularity for Roberts — with expanded rosters, he’d flip out entire lineups when an opposite-handed reliever came into the game — the change in the offense’s productivity against both lefties and righties jumped.
Through August, the Dodgers were among the worst clubs in baseball in facing left-handed pitching. They ranked 23rd in batting average (.232), 19th in OPS (.711), 19th in weighted on-base average (.308) and 16th in wRC+ (95).
With the new lineups in September? The Dodgers are fourth in baseball in batting average (.272), third in OPS (.825), fourth in wOBA (.353) and second in wRC+ (126) since. Of that lineup to face lefties, only Austin Barnes has a wRC+ below the league-average mark of 100.
Oh, and for comparison’s sake: their lineup against right-handers was tied for first in with a 136 wRC+ over that same span, as the group showed when they powered past the right-handed Mike Foltynewicz and Anibal Sánchez in Game 1 and Game 2.
With the Dodgers originally anticipating the right-handed Gausman, not Newcomb in Game 3, Roberts originally had scheduled a simulated game for Sunday afternoon with the club’s collection of right-handed hitters — Freese, Dozier, Matt Kemp, Chris Taylor and Austin Barnes — who combined to take just one plate appearance in the first two games — and have them partake in a simulated game at SunTrust in part to keep them “current.” With Newcomb now slated to start and part of that group expected to be in the lineup, the simulated game will be seen more as an opportunity to keep their taxi squad players sharp. Ross Stripling, Julio Urías and Josh Fields will likely throw to Chase Utley and Kyle Farmer, keeping them in tune in case they’re needed in the future.
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Given the length of Newcomb’s projected outing — he threw 25 pitches just three days before Sunday’s start, he likely will be on a limited workload with Gausman and Julio Teheran available out of the bullpen in an “all hands on deck” scenario. Newcomb also is a slight reverse-split candidate, with opposing hitters actually posting a lower OPS from the right side (.670) than the left (.712) this season. That will alter Roberts’ calculus as to how he shall construct his lineup, and who of his left-handed lineup will remain in for the chance that they only have to face Newcomb one time through the order. Roberts said, as a result, there might be a “tweak or two” from what has been his typical lineup against left-handed pitching, which usually has looked like this:
Chris Taylor – LF
Justin Turner – 3B
David Freese – 1B
Manny Machado – SS
Kiké Hernández – CF
Matt Kemp – RF
Brian Dozier – 2B
Austin Barnes – C
Pitcher’s spot
One of the expected tweaks is Yasmani Grandal, who has assumed the lion’s share of catcher reps and, given the off days during the NLDS, could conceivably catch all five games should the series go that far. The Dodgers could also seek to get Max Muncy in at first base given his aptitude against lefties, though Freese has been one of the club’s better hitters in September.
“He is a guy that has a good curveball,” Roberts said of Newcomb. “It’s a 12 to 6 old school curveball and plus velocity. So looking at our roster and what gives us the best chance to take on a good at-bat against that guy for one or two at-bats, I think that that’s the decision I’m going to make.
“I think September, obviously with the additions of some players, helped our performance, and also we started playing better baseball or having better at-bats against the lefties. So the numbers speak for themselves. So depending on how we kind of structure the lineup tomorrow, I still feel good about whoever we’re facing.”
(Top photo of Braves’ Sean Newcomb: Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)