The Rockies are planning to activate right-hander Antonio Senzatela from the 60-day IL for his season debut on Monday towards the Diamondbacks, as famous by Manny Randhawa of MLB.com. The Rockies’ 40-man roster presently stands at 39, that means a corresponding 40-man transfer will solely be essential to activate Senzatela if the emptiness is crammed earlier than his return.
The 29-year-old righty is poised to swimsuit up for his eighth season within the huge leagues, all of which have been spent within the Rockies group. Senzatela was restricted to simply two begins in 2023 resulting from an elbow sprain earlier than finally present process Tommy John surgical procedure final July. Previous to that, the righty had emerged as one of many membership’s higher pitchers since a breakout 2020 season the place he posted a 3.44 ERA in 12 begins. In 59 begins from 2020 to 2022, Senzatela pitched to a stable 4.38 ERA that’s truly 10% higher than league common by ERA+, a stat that adjusts for park components to account for the inflated offensive setting at Coors Area.
What’s extra, the righty truly sported an excellent stronger 3.96 FIP over that very same time-frame. Whereas he struck out simply 14.4% of batters confronted over these three seasons, Senzatela’s potential to restrict walks to a clip of simply 5.3% and maintain the ball on the bottom (50.6% grounder fee) to restrict house runs allowed him to submit stable peripherals that gave the Rockies sufficient confidence to increase him following the 2021 season on a five-year deal price $50.5MM that features a membership possibility for the 2027 season. Sadly, the contract hasn’t precisely gone properly so far as Senzatela’s 2022 season was reduce quick by an ACL tear, and his final two campaigns have been kind of worn out by Tommy John surgical procedure and the following rehab course of.
Regardless of the right-hander now being set to make lower than 25 begins over the primary three years of the contract, nonetheless, it’s not laborious to think about him being a invaluable piece for the Rockies headed into 2025. In any case, Senzatela’s grounder-heavy sport performs fairly properly at elevation and it’s not laborious to think about a rotation that pairs him with some mixture of German Marquez, Cal Quantrill, Kyle Freeland, Ryan Feltner, and Austin Gomber discovering some degree of success, no less than by the requirements of a Rockies franchise that has struggled to seek out constant pitching outcomes even in its best years. With a uncommon rotation surplus in Colorado and different younger arms like prospect Carson Palmquist presently on the Triple-A degree, it’s even doable to think about the Rockies having sufficient arms accessible for his or her 2025 rotation that they might hearken to commerce presents involving a pitcher like Quantrill or Gomber, as they reportedly did previous to this summer season’s commerce deadline.
Because the Rockies head in direction of the end line of what could possibly be their second consecutive 100-loss marketing campaign, dealing an arm from the rotation might permit them to handle different areas of the roster and complement the membership’s core items like Ryan McMahon, Brenton Doyle, and Ezequiel Tovar on the positional aspect. For now, although, Senzatela and the Rockies determine to give attention to getting the right-hander some begins on the huge league degree down the stretch as he seems to be to shake off the rust and head into his first wholesome offseason since he signed the aforementioned extension.