Rossc(alled)-up: Rockies promote lefty, option Antonio Senzatela

DENVER – The Colorado Rockies have added another left-hander to their bullpen. Zac Rosscup, who was traded to the club from the Chicago Cubs last month, has been called-up. Rookie right-hander Antonio Senzatela was optioned to Triple-A Albuquerque.

At 29, Rosscup will provide Colorado with another lefty option. He has been a menace to left-handed hitting, holding them to a .162/.303/.284 slash line over 45-plus innings in the bigs. He has spent most of 2017 at Triple-A, posting 17 solid appearances for Iowa with a 12.7 K/9, 2.6 BB/9 and a 2.60 ERA. For the Isotopes, he’s thrown 3.2 innings of scoreless baseball.

“This year I think I’ve faced mostly righties,” Rosscup said. “It’s a good thing to work on I haven’t had great success against righties in the bigs but I think I’m doing better now and I have a better plan of attack. I’m not doing anything different but I’m approaching it differently.”

“From Clackamas, OR, he’s an Oregonian, he’s from the Northwest! He’s got a leg up,” Washington born Rockies manager Bud Black said. “This guy has pitched in the big leagues he has a good arm and some deception. We like the depth he provides moving forward.”

The Rockies have Jake McGee and Mike Dunn in the backend right now as well as Chris Rusin in many different roles, all lefties.

“No it’s no possible (to have too many lefties in a bullpen),” Black said. “Would you have asked ‘is it possible to have any too many righties?’ But it probably is to be honest, but it’s nice to have a balance. It really comes down to how good your eight guys are total and I would rather have four and four than seven and one.”

Rosscup has a fastball-slider mix, topping out at around 94 mph and sitting 92 mph.

While Rosscup will round out the bullpen, the demotion for Senzatela may come as a shock at first. But at second glance optioning one of the best rookie pitchers in the NL around the All-Star Break makes perfect sense.

Becuase the way service time works a player can accumulate 172 days of service in a season and that is known as a full season. However, there is 183 days in a big league season so in order to not accumulate a full year of service you need to be in the minors for two or more weeks. The reason why this is important is because a player becomes a free agent after six full years of service time. Therefore rookies often get called up a few weeks into the season or get called down at the break so they miss the least amount of games in the majors as possible.

“His velocity was down a tick, he suffered in a few of his last starts, we felt him taking a step back would be better for him and the team,” Black said. “little breather both with the arm and mentality will freshen him up a bit.

“This will be a good break for him. We’ll have him be a little light during the break then he’ll go to Albuquerque and get a start.”

Senzatela has a 4.63 ERA in 18 games, 15 starts. He leads the Rockies in wins with nine and he only has three losses. He’s recently been coming out of the bullpen but long-term he is a starter. Senzatella has never pitched in Triple-A he was promoted straight from Double-A out of spring training. It has been rumored that he is on a pitch count and that would make sense since the 22-year-old had only made seven starts above High-A before 2017.

As for the other young starters and if we’ll see this with them Black said, “potentially.”