Newman swings hot bat after adjustments at plate
BRADENTON, Fla. — Sometimes things just seem easier for hitters in a given stretch of play.
That’s the case for Pirates infielder Kevin Newman right now. As opposed to last season, when he slashed .224/.281/.276 in 44 games, the 27-year-old is currently hitting .643 in the spring and leads the team with a .722 onbase percentage.
He has made some adjustments to his stance, which can certainly count for some of the turnaround, but he has also gotten some good luck.
Take Tuesday’s game against the Minnesota Twins, for example. Newman went 3 for 4 with three singles. The first was a solid piece of contact into right field. The second was an infield single that was knocked down by a diving Twins second baseman Jorge Polanco, and the third was bloop into center field that perfectly dropped between a pair of Twins defenders.
That’s the point, though. Newman’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP) last season was .250, which is a low mark for the statistic, and he was due for a bit of a turnaround in luck.
“Yeah, that’s sometimes how it goes,” Newman said. “You get a couple good hops here and there. I’m sure later in the season I’ll line out five times in a row and not see a base hit. That’s just kind of how it is. It evens out, hopefully. You take ’em when you can get ’em.”
To be fair, those adjustments to his stance have certainly helped, too. Newman says he’s holding his hands a little bit lower and closer to his body than he had been doing previously.
It’s actually the stance he used coming up through the minors, and after the struggles he had a season ago, he wanted to make some sort of change. So in the offseason, he experimented with going
back to the old stance. So far it’s worked.
“It’s been good. Anytime you can get some knocks to start the spring off, it’s kind of a good feeling to build some confidence as you’re getting ready to go into the season,” Newman said. “Have to be happy about that.”
Newman’s emergence could make the battle for playing time at shortstop a lot less interesting. He, Cole Tucker and Erik Gonzalez have been the three primary candidates to start at the position once camp breaks. Newman might have been the favorite to win the job already, given that he hit over .300 just two seasons ago for the Pirates, while Gonzalez and Tucker don’t have anywhere near that track record in the majors.
It is possible that manager Derek Shelton and the rest of the staff making personnel decisions don’t really care about 2019 performances at this point, but Newman breaking out in the spring certainly feels like it keeps him a step ahead of Gonzalez and Tucker for now.
“It’s a good competition,” Newman said.
“As everybody knows, we’re a tight-knit group. Cole and Gonzo and myself, we’re all friends. We’re all rooting for each other. We’re all on the same team. At the end of the day, we’re going out there competing and we’ll see what happens.”
Seeking second opinion
Blake Cederlind, a hardthrowing young reliever, left last Wednesday’s game against the New York Yankees having struggled with his control. He hit some batters, he walked others, he gave up some hits and then departed. He was later placed on the 60-day injured list with a UCL strain in his right elbow.
Since then, Cederlind has been seeking a second opinion on his injury, likely to help him decide whether or not Tommy John surgery will be necessary, but it’s taken longer than expected due to COVID protocols.
“It’s just due to the COVID restrictions. We want to make sure that we honor Blake’s request for a second opinion,” Pirates
director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk said Wednesday. “And we support that, because any time any athlete has an injury, we want to make sure that their needs are met and accommodated, so nothing is different in this regard.
“Unfortunately, it’s just taking a little bit more time to learn what we need to, what Blake needs to, to make his decision moving forward.”
Further roster cuts
The Pirates made their first roster cuts Tuesday, in themiddle of their game with the Minnesota Twins. On Wednesday morning, they made a few more. Infielder Ji-Hwan Bae and catchers Christian Kelly and Arden Pabst were reassigned to minorleague camp.
Then, after they’d played the Tampa Bay Rays, they reassigned right-handed reliever Yerry De Los Santos and left- hander Blake Weiman to minor league camp.
These moves certainly aren’t surprising. None of the five players was expected to contribute this season.