Newsom climbs ladder unconventionally
But usually, by the time he's "named" and the trade is complete, most fans have probably forgotten the trade he was involved in and The Player flies right under the radar en route to his new organization.
Randy Newsom knows all about it.
Last year, right about this time, he was pitching for the Wilmington Blue Rocks, then the Boston Red Sox's entry in the Class A Advanced Carolina League, when his manager Chad Epperson called him into his office and told him that he'd just been traded to Cleveland -- as the player to be named later in the previous January's deal that sent outfielder Coco Crisp, catcher Josh Bard and reliever David Riske to Boston and brought third baseman Andy Marte, catcher Kelly Shoppach and reliever Guillermo Mota to the Indians.
"Six big leaguers and this guy," joked Newsom, who currently closes for the Double-A Akron Aeros of the Eastern League. "Which one doesn't belong?"
After spending a few days with the Indians' Class A Lake County club for physicals and other paperwork, he joined the Kinston Indians, who just happened to be facing, you guessed it, Wilmington.
When he made his Cleveland debut, his former teammates hit the first three pitches he threw to them for doubles.
"A guy I'd played with for three years, Scott White, he doubles. The next pitch was to my catcher for the first half of the year, Matt Kent. He doubles. My third pitch is to one of my best friends, a guy I co-own a business with, Bryan Pritz, and he doubles too," recalled Newsom, 25. "So here I am three pitches into my Kinston career, and I've given up two runs on three doubles."
But after that inauspicious debut with the club, he settled down and dominated as a setup man. In the playoffs, he came on and shut down the opposition in all three games of the Indians' sweep of Frederick in the finals, tossing 5 1/3 scoreless innings to win the Most Valuable Player award in the Carolina League Mills Cup championship series.
Not bad for a side-arming reliever who wasn't even drafted out of Tufts University.
Back in his college days, Newsom had a more conventional over-the-top delivery but was still known as a tireless workhorse for the Jumbos. The Cincinnati native was the jack of all trades at the prestigious university, a four-year starter on the varsity baseball team where he would serve as closer on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, while starting the nightcaps of the traditional Saturday doubleheaders.
In the meantime, he also played for the Tufts football team, choosing the school over alternatives such as Harvard because it was the only place willing to let him play both sports.
Sure, Tufts may not have the same "baseball prestige" as, say, a Stanford or a Cal State Fullerton or a Texas, but Newsom hopes he might eventually bring a little pride to his former school.
"I hope I'm giving them good press, because Tufts hasn't had too many pro athletes," he laughed. "Lots of guys doing great things like fighting cancer and mating fireflies for DNA reproduction, but not a lot of baseball players."
Off the field, he pursued a pre-law curriculum and was active in student government, with several acceptances to equally prestigious law schools already in hand.
This may have had more than a little to do with his ending up undrafted in 2004. After his junior year ended, though, he inked a deal with the Red Sox, who had gotten to see him pitching in the Boston suburb. The Sox sent him to the Gulf Coast League, where he posted a 2.81 ERA in 18 games out of the pen.
It was the Red Sox who converted him from an over-the-top thrower to a sidearmer, and he ran with that conversion easily, especially as it allowed him to become even more of a workhorse than he already was.
Newsom refined his new delivery in 2005 at Class A Greenville before moving up to Wilmington in 2006, where he helped lead his Blue Rocks to the first-half Northern Division title in the Carolina League, posting a 0.69 ERA in June before he was sent to the Indians, then doing the same for them in the second half.
Coming off of his remarkable '06 adventure, Newsom headed back to Medford for the offseason, where he worked out five hours a day and taught AP English at Medford High School as a substitute teacher until the regular teacher returned from paternity leave.
It took a little while for his students to figure out they had a real pro athlete at the front of them in the classroom. But when the Medford varsity baseball coach stopped by the class one day to ask Newsom if he'd help out with his team's workouts, their curiosity was piqued.
Once he explained what he did and who he played for, they knew his life story within 24 hours.
"Kids Google ... everything these days, so it all came out," he said.
When Newsom headed down to Winter Haven in March, he hoped to break camp with the Akron club, and felt that he had a decent shot at it.
So did the Akron manager Tim Bogar.
"I'd never seen him pitch and didn't know anything about him, except how well he'd done with Kinston. But as Spring Training progressed, I started liking him," Bogar said. "He was growing on me, how he went about his business, the stuff he threw, how he attacked hitters. I knew for the most part what I was going to get this year, and I thought he'd fit in my bullpen really well to start the season."
A numbers game, however, determined otherwise, and in the waning days of Spring Training, Newsom was reassigned back to Kinston.
"The trickle-down effect gets everyone and to be fair to the Indians, a lot of things happened at once," Newsom said, citing Rule 5 pitchers returning, players returning more quickly than anticipated from injuries and a few late free agent signings.
So Newsom started 2007 where he ended 2006, with a manager, Mike Sarbaugh, who knew him and trusted him with the ball in any situation. And after posting a 1.50 ERA in 11 games at Kinston, Newsom was promoted to Akron in mid-May.
There, Bogar put him right into the closer's role, the first time he'd held that honor, and he responded by converting his first 13 save situations. He posted identical 2.35 ERAs in May and June before struggling a bit in July (4.38 in 10 games).
While the right-hander has dominated fellow righties with a .197 average against, left-handed hitters have batted .390 against him, something he is working on with the same studious attitude that served him so well at Tufts.
"I think in the first few weeks it looked like nobody had ever seen a sidearmer before," Bogar said. "But since then, he's had some growing pains as we've played some teams so often that they get to know him a little better. They've made an adjustment to him, and now he's in the process of making the adjustment back to them."
Newsom realizes he probably won't make it to the Majors as a closer with his stuff, but he believes he can still be a successful Major Leaguer with what he has to work with.
"I'm never going to be a top prospect; as a sidearmer you're never going to be 'The Guy,'" he said. "But [Baltimore submariner reliever] Chad Bradford was never 'The Guy' either, and he just signed a three-year deal for $12 million."
Newsom knows a little bit about the history of the game and is hoping that history is ready to repeat itself.
"Sidearmers dominated the 1980s, and then they went to the power arm," he said. "But now people are starting to realize, 'Hey, getting a ground ball when you need it is a good thing to do against professional hitters.'"
He also appreciates the fact that with the Indians he has had managers, in Sarbaugh last year and Bogar this year, who really believe in him.
"The reason I'm closing in Akron is because I have a manager and a pitching coach who aren't afraid to throw conventional wisdom out," he said. "Even if I'm not going to close all the time anywhere, I feel comfortable doing it, because I like pitching in games where we're going to win."
The Indians organization loves his smarts, his sunny personality and his makeup as much as they love knowing they can send him out there every day if they need to.
"He's just a pleasure to have around," Bogar said. "He's always in a good mood, upbeat all the time, wants the ball, wants to be the guy that helps the team win."
So in this case, Randy Newsom, The Player To Be Named Later, may not be "The Guy" but to his Indians teammates he is definitely "The Man."
Lisa Winston is a reporter for MLB.com.