I don't think that NewRelic would help in this situation, as they only display SQL queries and the corresponding execution plan for slow queries in slow transactions. While this is certainly helpful, the blog post is pointing out the need for developers to know what their ORM is doing from the start, not just when a performance problem begins to manifest.

Put another way, if you have good visibility into your system early on, and understand what's going on under the hood, you can avoid performance problems in the future.