Pitchers on the road into Spring Training with Dallas Newton(Southeast Guilford) and Mitch Atkins(Northeast Guilford) looking to land/stick

Two Greensboro-area pitchers are on the road into Spring Training and for these two guys, they are related, but then again, they are really very different…

Mitch Atkins(Northeast Guilford High School) has been plying his pitching trade in professional baseball now for 10 years/seasons and he has been with the Cubs, Orioles, Braves and now Mitch will pitch for the Rangers this season…Atkins has been all the way up to the majors with the Orioles and the Cubs, plus he got started with the Chicago Cubs and worked his way through their system going back now, 10 years ago…

Atkins has a cousin, Dallas Newton(Southeast Guilford High School), and Newton has been around with the Arizona Diamondbacks for two seasons and in 2015 he will begin his third ‘tour of duty’ with the D’Backs…

Newton at age 19 and Atkins at age 27 and these are two young men that are related, but their professional careers could not be any different…

Mitch will pitch for the Texas Rangers’ Triple A Round Rock Express at the start of 2015 and Dallas has been assigned to the Missoula Osprey, a lower-tier minor league team for Arizona…

The way this works, Atkins is trying to hang on….Mitch has been in pros now for 10 years and for Dallas, he is just trying to keep on working his way up the ladder….Patience is a must when you are trying to move up and patience is still very important in the pros, when are just doing all you can to hang on and to hang around…

It just takes one good break, maybe one good season, maybe just one good game and you might see Mitch and Dallas both on the move….

As we have been saying during our talk here, Mitch Atkins has been on the scene for a few years now and Dallas Newton is trying to hit the scene and find a way to stay on the radar/scene….

Newton stands at 6’5 and weighs 215 and his numbers with the Missoula Montana Osprey in 2014 read like this:
Record(4-5)/5.13 ERA/11 games/11 starts/52 2/3’s Innings of work/42 runs allowed/58 hits/18 BB’s/40 K’s/7 HR’s…

Here is what Jeff Wiser from the Arizona Diamondbacks was saying about Dallas Newton on August 6, 2013:
Starting Pitcher Dallas Newton came out of the gate firing. The 6’5” righty was selected in the 32nd round out of Pitt Community College (NC) in this year’s draft. Although his season totals were not great, he was electric on the night I saw him, throwing his fastball and breaking ball for strikes, getting ahead of the hitters and then putting the righties away with the low-and-away slider. He flashed a changeup that was below average but with time could develop into a useful third pitch. He sat right around 90mph with the heater but the slider is what was devastating, racking up six strikeouts in just four innings, including striking out the side in the first.

Mitch Atkins spent time between the Atlanta Braves Double A and Triple A team in 2014 and while Mitch was with the Double A Mississippi Braves, he went 6-1 overall, with an ERA of 3.45, he worked in 17 games, with just 1 start, allowing 43 runs on 100 hits, in 107 Innings, giving up 13 HR’s, while walking 19 and striking out 90 opposing batters…

Atkins stands at 6’4 and he weighs 225, so there is some similarity in the size of the two cousins, Newton and Atkins…

Dallas Newton has a loyal following in the Southeast Guilford side of Greensboro and Mitch Atkins has his following on the Northeast side of town…

Newton decided when he came home last off-season that he was going to do something to give back to his community and he went to work working with the Southeast Guilford Junior Legion Fall Baseball team…There were days when the coaches might be running late for practice or for games and Newton would roll up his sleeves and take over the run the team…He found that by pitching in and helping, it made him a better pitcher and a better person…By sharing what he had learned, Newton was able to give back to a program that had been there for him when he was coming up through the middle school and high school ranks…

Newton continued to find time to help all throughout the off-season and many days you might find him back down at Southeast Guilford lending a helping hand to some of the up-and-coming SEG Falcon prospects and giving tips to the older and younger players on how they might better their game…

Newton didn’t come into the Southeast setting as a current Arizona Diamondback, he came back as a former Southeast Guilford Falcon, being true to his old orange and black colors and continuing to be true to his school and his old team…Lots of opportunities to give back in life and Dallas Newton is finding a way to add a positive spin on how things are done at the professional level and then how things can get done, back down on the high school level….

Mitch Atkins has spent the past several off-seasons as a trainer at Carmine Pagano’s Carolina Acceleration training center and with his time spent there, Mitch has been able to satisfy the itch that he gets during his down time from professional baseball…Atkins has helped train many young men over the years and his work has not gone unnoticed, as the photos of kid that he has trained line the walls of the Carolina Acceleration facility and the walls of the Greensboro Batting Center on High Point Road…

Newton and Atkins are two young men to keep an eye on and while researching Mitch Atkins, I found Nick McBride, a former pitcher for the Ragsdale Tigers has been assigned to the roster of the Texas Rangers Double A Frisco Roughriders, for the start of the 2015 season….Look out for these young men and be watching for other locals that might pop up or down, during the upcoming season…