Travs' Newcomb tosses six two-hit innings

Don't be tricked by the numbers.

Although he's allowed a total of two runs while striking out nine over 11 innings since his second promotion of the season, Sean Newcomb has definitely seen a difference in the level of competition at the Double-A level.

"It's just basically a tighter zone and it's harder to fool people," said the Angels' top prospect.

Making his second Texas League start on Friday night, Newcomb gave up two hits over six-plus scoreless innings, fanning four and walking three in Arkansas' 2-1 loss at Springfield. 

In his final outing for Class A Advanced Inland Empire, the 22-year-old left-hander vowed to attack the zone aggressively over the remainder of the season.

"That's what I've been doing," he said. "With the walks, I got behind good hitters and I didn't want to give them anything good to hit. But I wasn't too mad about the walks. I stayed aggressive overall and threw a lot of early strikes."

Newcomb, MLB.com's No. 24 overall prospect, started the year with Class A Burlington in the Midwest League, moved to the California League in mid-May and pitched his way out of that hitters' haven by the end of July. Across the three levels, he's 7-1 with a 2.19 ERA and a Minor League-leading 138 strikeouts over 111 innings in 22 starts. 

The native of Brockton, Massachussetts, retired the first five batters on Friday before Aledmys Diaz doubled, but Newcomb got out of the second inning on the very next pitch. 

"I [fell behind] and I gave [Diaz] a good pitch to hit. I wasn't too worried about it," he said.

By the end of a 1-2-3 third, the 2014 first-round pick was in a groove. 

"I didn't feel too good in my bullpen [before the game]," he said. "I was missing a lot of pitches, but my bullpen doesn't usually carry over to my game and I once I got going in the first inning, I was fine."

After he finished the sixth on 95 pitches, he had a chance to do something he'd never done before in the Minors: pitch in the seventh. But under pressure from the pitch clock, Newcomb plunked Nick Martini with the only offering he made in the frame.

"After my warmup pitches, we threw the ball around the infield and when the ball came back to me I looked up and saw I had 13 seconds on that clock," he said. "I was rushing a little bit. I'm sure if I hadn't rushed, I could have gotten a groundout or something.

"I wanted to get through the seventh. That was the first seventh I've been in in a while, so I was excited to still be in the game. I was a little bit frustrated [with the hit batter], but no big deal."

Of his 96 pitches, 57 were strikes.

Newcomb handed the ball to Eduard Santos, who got out of the inning without incident.

Greg Mahle pitched around a hit in the eighth, but Danny Reynolds (1-3) could not finish off the Cardinals, who tied it in the ninth on Martini's RBI groundout and walked off on Mike O'Neill's base hit. 

Arkansas' Raywilly Gomez was 4-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.