Senzatela Could Be Quick Riser For Rockies

Talk to folks around the Rockies—coaches, front-office executives, teammates—and they’ll tell you righthander Antonio Senzatela is very quiet, preferring to stay in the background.

Talk to them about his pitching style, and you’ll get a very different response.

“I call him the Silent Assassin,” Modesto pitching coach Brandon Emanuel said. “Off the field, he’s a very even-keeled guy. But he’s a guy who likes the competition; he rises to the occasion.”

Senzatela, in his fifth season with the Rockies although he just turned 21 in January, has risen to the occasion often enough that he ranks ninth in the talent-packed Colorado organization.

In four seasons since signing for $250,000 out of Venezuela, the 6-foot-1, 180-pound righthander is 37-18, 2.49 with a 333/96 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He was 9-9, 2.51 at high Class A Modesto in 2015. He led the hitter-friendly California League in ERA, WHIP and opponent average (.229) and finished second in strikeouts and innings. His ERA was the lowest by a qualified Cal League pitcher in at least the past 10 seasons.

Senzatela—”Senzy” or “Senza” to his teammates—leads with a heavy fastball to both sides of the plate, sitting 92-95 mph and touching as high as 98, and a changeup with real tumbling action.

“There’s power to his fastball, there’s angle to his fastball, and there’s command,” Rockies manager Walt Weiss told BA correspondent Jack Etkin. “And you put those three things together, and you got something.”

A separator for Senzatela in 2015—and one that has the Rockies believing he can stay in the rotation long-term—was the development of a slider. Working with Emanuel—a second-round pick of the Angels in 1998 out of Northwestern State—Senzatela shelved a curveball to focus on the slider.

“The (curve) wasn’t really working well, so we tried something different and I feel more comfortable,” Senzatela said through Rafael Nieves of Beverly Hills Sports Council, who is the pitcher’s agent and sometime interpreter.

“He’s made big strides with the breaking ball,” Emanuel said. “He’s focused more on the slider … he tinkered with grips and found one and it became a go-to pitch for him. He gets swings and misses with it.”

Emanuel said Senzatela used a different grip and that enabled him to get more velocity on the pitch.

“He’s gotten it up in the 80s, whereas before he was sitting in the lower 80s. Now it looks like a true fastball coming out of the hand.”

As much as the Rockies appreciate Senzatela’s stuff, it’s his mound demeanor that has them most excited—and gains praise from opponents.

“He attacks,” Bakersfield manager Eddie Menchaca told mlb.com. “He attacks the inside part of the plate with a four-seamer and a two-seamer. If you don’t back off, he’s going to get you. He’s not afraid.”

Senzatela said that fearlessness is not a recently acquired trait.

“I have always felt like that, even when I was 17 years old in (the) DSL,” he said. “I need to attack the zone and don’t fall behind on the count … that’s when you get in trouble.”

Not that he’d know—he didn’t allow more than four earned runs in any of his 26 starts in 2015. He rarely walks batters (1.96 walks per nine innings as a pro) and he’s allowed just 23 homers in 455 innings. Thanks to the improved slider, his strikeout rate spiked to 8.3 batters per nine innings from 5.5 in 2014.

The Rockies are also encouraged about Senzatela’s durability. He has an ideal pitcher’s frame with a thick lower half, which he attributes to core and leg workouts and watching his diet.

Another evaluator, who was less sanguine about Senzatela’s secondary stuff, said the pitcher checks off the physicality box.

“He’s 6-foot-1, but he’s got a strong, wide frame and the arm strength is there,” he said. “He’s far from a finished product, but guys at 21 are pitching in college.”

Senzatela is also able to generate tremendous downhill plane, despite looking shorter than his listed height. The Rockies teach pitchers how to achieve that angle, but they also say he has a knack for it.

“He gets on the back side, then gets on the front side coming through,” Emanuel said. “He’s typical of Latin American pitchers (in that) he gets on the high front side coming up and creates some serious angle. Guys don’t tend to square him up. He creates deception with that front side.

“All hitters want that ball on a tee … his ball doesn’t come in like that.”

Senzatela gave credit for his downward movement to Edison Lora, the Rockies’ pitching coordinator in Latin America.

“He always stressed to me that I needed to created an angle on my pitches to produce weak contact and lot of grounders,” he said.

Senzatela also has a very clean delivery, making it easy for him to repeat and stay online to the plate.

That only adds to the deception, Emanuel said.

“You see Latin pitchers, typically, they’re slingy, there’s some whip,” he said. (Senzatela’s) clean. It doesn’t look like he’s throwing as hard … He’s not slinging the ball, it just gets on you.”

He’s also got an edge that belies his off-field persona.

“He’ll be sitting at 92-95 (mph), and someone will turn on one,” Emanuel said. “All of a sudden you’ll see 97-97-98 … punch-punch-punch.”

Still, despite Senzatela’s obvious talent, succeeding at the big league level is no guarantee, especially with his parent club.

Figuring out that the puzzle that is pitching in Colorado has gone through several permutations, from bringing in sinkerballers such as Bill Swift and Aaron Cook, signing high-priced free agents such as Darryl Kile, Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle, to drafting hard-throwers such as Jon Gray and Eddie Butler.

But since Jeff Bridich was promoted to general manager in October 2014, the Rockies have amassed an unprecedented—for them—group of young arms that bodes well for the future: righthanders Jeff Hoffman, Miguel Castro, Jesus Tinoco, German Marquez, Mike Nikorak, Peter Lambert, Gray and Butler, and lefthanders Kyle Freeland and Tyler Anderson.

Of all those arms, Senzatela isn’t the biggest, or the hardest thrower or the highest paid. But he might end up being one of the best.

“Not to us, but in the global prospect world, he gets lost a little bit,” player development director Zach Wilson told Etkin. “But he shouldn’t.”

General manager Jeff Bridich agreed.

“It’s not like this is a fluke,” Bridich told The Denver Post. “This is just a little picture of the type of talent that this kid has. And he’s responded well to being pushed into a full-season league at a younger age.”

With his pitch mix, poise and pitchability, the Rockies could fast-track Senzatela and probably use him out of the bullpen. That won’t happen, Emanuel said.

“Good starters are hard to find,” he said. “You want to use that as long as you can. I don’t see them throwing him in the bullpen.”

Still, Senzatela has his own timeline.

“My goal is to make my MLB debut this season,” he said.

Senzatela will start the season with the Double-A Hartford Yard Goats, with his first start set for Saturday. But if he continues to pitch the way he has, the Rockies will have a tough time holding him back.