Antonio Senzatela has gone from a shaky starter in Colorado to something far more dangerous since landing with the Brewers, and the change has come down to more than just a new uniform. Milwaukee didn’t simply inherit a reliever with a better cutter and call it a day. The Brewers reshaped how he works, and the results have taken off.
The big shift started with the sinker. Senzatela had been a four-seamer and cutter pitcher with the Rockies, but after the trade deadline the Brewers pushed him toward a sinker-cutter mix.
That fit made sense the moment he got out of Coors Field. He throws from a high arm slot for a sinkerballer, and the pitch gets its movement largely from grip and seam-shifted wake, not from the kind of spin tricks that are harder to use at elevation.
Once Milwaukee got him in a different environment, Chris Hook and Jim Henderson saw a fastball that might work even better than the one he had been using.
It didn’t click immediately. In his first five outings with the Brewers, the sinker got shelled.
He allowed five runs, four earned, in his first 3 2/3 innings and briefly looked like just another disappointing deadline bullpen addition. Then came a rough outing in the first game of Milwaukee’s series at Dodger Stadium, and the adjustment finally arrived: Senzatela moved from the third-base side of the rubber to the first-base side.
That mattered because his sinker moves a lot more to his arm side than his four-seamer does, about eight inches more. From the wrong spot, that kind of movement can create two different problems.
If he aims at the arm-side edge, the pitch can run too far off the plate. If he aims glove-side, it can drift back into the middle and turn into a gift.
The Brewers wanted the pitch to play with more conviction and better geometry, and the move across the mound gave him both.
Milwaukee also asks certain pitchers to attack the glove-side edge even with sinkers that run arm side, and Senzatela fits that idea. His sinker comes from a relatively high slot and relies heavily on seam-shifted wake, much like Quinn Priester. Once Senzatela moved to the first-base side, the whole thing started to work.
A 2-1 sinker to Teoscar Hernández in his first appearance after the change showed it right away. Hernández’s reaction told the story.
If he tried to cover that pitch, he’d be vulnerable to a cutter well off the plate. If he gave up on it, he was stuck with a called strike.
On the next pitch, Senzatela brought the sinker a little more over the plate, but it still stayed down and fell away, and Hernández grounded out to shortstop.
Twelve days later, Christopher Morel got the same treatment on the other side of the country. Senzatela worked him into a pop-up to end the inning, with a sinker in on the hands after forcing him to think about the outer part of the zone. When the pitch is located well, it becomes brutal to cover.
The new setup has also opened the door for a more classic arm-side sinker, and Senzatela has used that version to overpower hitters too. One pitch to Julio Rodríguez was so effective it nearly escaped the catcher’s glove. The pitch was too nasty to catch cleanly.
The broader result has been a flood of ground balls. Senzatela was already good at keeping the sinker down, which means he’s rarely in danger of giving up home runs with it even when he catches the middle of the plate. Now, with the rubber adjustment and the Brewers’ fastball plan, he’s become a much more trustworthy weapon.
That matters for Milwaukee’s bullpen structure. Trevor Megill, Abner Uribe and Aaron Ashby remain the top tier, assuming they stay healthy.
But Senzatela’s growth gives the Brewers another important arm, one that can help ease the workload on that group during the stretch run. JoJo Romero and Chad Patrick fit into that mix too.
And if everyone is sharp in October, Milwaukee’s pitching depth gets even harder to deal with.
The Brewers turned a reliever who had flashed but stumbled out of the gate into someone they can trust more. That kind of adjustment can matter in September, and it could matter even more after Game 162.
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