Rockies Review: April 11, 2017 - Rookie earns first win and first major award

Antonio Senzatela has come a long way since signing as a 16-year-old out of Venezuela, both literally and figuratively.

After an injury-plagued season at Double-A in 2016, Senzatela made the Opening Day roster in 2017 with a mere seven starts about Class High-A.

The 22-year-old tossed five shutout innings in his big league debut to begin the season in Milwaukee before coming home to Colorado to make his first start at Coors Field.

Manuel Margot tagged a leadoff home run to put the Padres ahead early. That may have been the best thing to happen to Senze as he went on to surrender only four more hits and one run across seven strong innings.

In the process, Senzatela earned his first win in the majors. He backed up those performances with three more impressive outings to earn the NL Rookie of the Month in April with a 2.81 ERA (32.0 IP, 10 ER) and 3-1 record.

On This Day

After going 0-for-3 against DBacks’ ace Brandon Webb, Todd Helton lines out to the second baseman against Chad Qualls to complete the 0-fer in 2008. For the first time since August 28 of the previous season, Helton fails to reach base, halting his streak of 41 games.

At the time, Helton’s span tied Andrés Galarraga for the franchise record. In the coming years, Troy Tulowitzki would tie the mark (2015) and Michael Cuddyer would eclipse the record with 46 consecutive games reaching base in 2013.

Madison Bumgarner single-handedly defeats the Rockies 6-5 on this date in 2014. While MadBum may have surrendered four runs in six innings on the mound, he walloped a grand slam off Jorge De La Rosa and added an RBI on a sacrifice fly at the plate.

When Jeff Hoffman came into a game as a pinch runner to ultimately score the winning run against the Baltimore Orioles last season, it was oddly reminiscent of an at bat from the previous year when starting pitcher Tyler Anderson was forced to pinch-hit for Gerardo Parra in the third inning.

“What happened to Parra?” Great question.

This game in 2018 is more memorable as the one in which Nolan Arenado went ballistic and attempted to remove the cap off Luis Perdomo’s head, with or without said head still attached. Parra joined in the fracas as he and A.J. Ellis were also ejected from the ball game.

Of current Rockies, only Arenado has a hitting streak greater than 20 games. Trevor Story did his best to reach the mark by starting a 16-game hit streak, the longest of his young career thus far and longest for any Colorado players in 2019.

With a fourth-inning single off Jeff Samardzija, Story tallied one of only three hits on the night in the 1-0 shutout at the hands of the Giants. Carlos Estévez, recently promoted, got the final out and went on to have an excellent season from that point forward.

Fun Fact

From April 11th until the final game of the season, the trio of Scott Oberg, Jairo Díaz and Estévez were worth 2.8 wins-above-replacement (fWAR) according to FanGraphs; the remainder of the bullpen was worth a combined -2.6 fWAR.

On This Date In Baseball History

Mark Langston tosses seven innings in his California Angels debut in 1990, and Mike Witt finishes the final two frames to combine for a 1-0 Opening Day no-hitter against the Seattle Mariners at Anaheim Stadium. The only run of the game comes on Dante Bichette’s seventh-inning bases loaded walk.