After strong CWS, UVa's Newell seeking consistency at the Cape

Life has been good for Chris Newell at the Cape Cod League this summer. He’s been living on a farm with about a half dozen other ballplayers, trying to make time for mornings at the beach while spending his evenings at the ballpark.

The rising junior centerfielder from Virginia has also been a productive part of the Harwich Mariners’ postseason push that culminated in the team clinching a playoff spot earlier this week. The Mariners have lost just four of the 19 games Newell has played in since he was plugged into the No. 2 spot in the lineup following UVa's run to the College World Series.

“That was a big joke going around,” Harwich head coach Steve Englert told CavsCorner by phone this week, “that we hadn’t lost a game since Newell showed up.”

Newell rolled into Harwich playing his best baseball of the season. He went 6-for-10 at the plate in three games at the CWS, including two of the three home runs the Hoos hit in Omaha. That performance capped an 11-game postseason stretch in which Newell hit .353 and slugged a team-best .647, while leading the team with five stolen bases and tying for the team lead with three homers.

“I swung it pretty good in the College World Series,” Newell said. “Probably the best I felt all year happened to be on the biggest stage for us. I’m just trying to stay consistent with that and just keep it rolling throughout the summer. Try to get some confidence back that may have been lost for a little bit, but I’m in a pretty good spot right now.”

Newell looked like a rising college baseball star as a freshman, as he led UVa in all three slash lines (.407/.545/.729) and with 20 RBI, and hit four homers in 18 games before the COVID-19 pandemic halted the season. That performance prompted D1Baseball to name him the top freshman in the ACC for that abbreviated season.

But Newell spent much of this spring mired in a sophomore slump. He spent the entire season at the bottom of the lineup and struggled to make consistent contact. His 75 strikeouts were the most on the team by a wide margin, and were the most for a UVa hitter since Jarrett Parker whiffed 80 times in 2009. Newell struck out in a third of his total plate appearances, up from 26.9 percent as a freshman the year before.

Following up on that big freshman year proved to be a challenge. Buoyed by his strong postseason performance, Newell finished his second season slashing .258/.336/.385 with five homers and 34 RBI in 58 games. His 13 stolen bases were second on the team after he swiped a team-best eight in those 18 games as a freshman.

“During this whole year I've just tried to basically be a sponge and absorb as much as I could,” Newell said in June before the Hoos left for Omaha. “Learn what works and what doesn't, and move on from my failures and just turn the page. That's what baseball is.”

“I would say this about Chris Newell: We wouldn't be in Omaha without Chris Newell,” Brian O’Connor said prior to the Cavaliers’ College World Series opener against Tennessee. “Sure, maybe offensively he hasn't achieved what everybody else thought he should achieve. But this process and development of a baseball player, it's continuous. He has shown growth in areas. And I'm proud of him.”

Following the season, O’Connor tasked Newell with continuing that growth at the Cape. The two agreed that Newell needed to be more of a base-stealing threat. He’s 21 for 23 in stolen base attempts at UVa, and his speed was also frequently on display as he ranged across the outfield to run down fly balls. But Newell conceded that his base-stealing lagged this spring as he struggled to consistently get on base.

More importantly, O’Connor wanted Newell to work on his day-to-day consistency.

“Just trying to be my same self throughout the whole year,” Newell explained, “and try and limit those ups and downs that I kind of struggled with a little bit this year.”

Newell joined Harwich on July 4th and recorded hits in seven of his first nine games, capped by a 3-for-6 night on July 16th at Hyannis that raised his stats to summer highs of .306/.342/.583. A few days after that performance, Newell was named a Cape Cod League all-star.

“He’s a toolsy kid. It’s all there,” said Englert. “He can run, he can hit. He can hit with power. He’s a great kid. I love him. I love having him around. He’s got a great personality, the makeup is there.

“He’s starting to live up to his expectations that he had coming out of high school. I know he had a bit of a struggle to start the season at UVa but he started to turn it on down the stretch, and that’s continued,” the head coach continued. “I think the way he is progressing down here and he takes that back to Virginia in the spring, he’s gonna be a really high draft pick, I think.”

Englert has spent his summers as head coach at Harwich since 2003. He called Newell a “prototypical UVa kid” and compared him to former Mariners Derek Fisher, Pavin Smith, and Ernie Clement. What has impressed Englert the most has been the way Newell has avoided what the head coach described as a CWS hangover.

“He comes in every day and gets his work in,” Englert said. “I think there’s a passion for the game for him and there’s obviously a desire to play professional baseball. And I think that now that he’s starting to have success—especially in a league like the Cape, which is the best collegiate league in the country—I think he’s building a ton of confidence.”

“Personally, I feel like when you’re playing high-level baseball all the time it kind of eases up some pressure when the season rolls around,” Newell said, “because you have something to lean back on and you’ve been doing it for so long. And summer ball gives you plenty of experience in certain situations in a game, and it kind of just helps to give you kind of a crutch of something to lean on in situations during the season. You can kind of just tell yourself you’ve been here before.”

An ankle injury suffered while sliding into a base on an attempted steal recently kept Newell out of the lineup for nine days. It was mostly a precaution Englert explained, saying he wanted his center fielder 100 percent healthy for the playoffs, which begin later today.

“He got back in the lineup (last Friday) and he hit a two-run jack.” Englert added with a laugh.

It was Newell’s fifth home run of the summer, good for second on the team and tied for 10th on the Cape. A 2-for-17 stretch over the Mariners’ last four regular season games dropped Newell’s slash line to .250/.288/.500, while his strikeout rate sat at 28.8 percent of his plate appearances.

Newell and the Mariners will play a best-of-three playoff series with Brewster this weekend, with the winner advancing to the Cape’s championship round. He says his goal is to help Harwich win that title before returning to Charlottesville this fall and turning his attention to another CWS run with the Wahoos.

“Obviously it’s great and all to get there and compete there, but it left a little bit of a sour taste in our mouth for those of us who are coming back, for sure,” he admitted. “I mean, to get there is great but we didn’t really get everything that we wanted. We obviously wanted to go in there and win the whole thing, so that definitely serves us some motivation for next year for us, for sure.”