There are a lot of moving parts that have to fit together in order to turn around a losing team. Major League Baseball front offices have to bring in talented players and develop them…and then also retain those players’ services in the age of free agency. Making a few good trades can be important, and having some good luck can figure in. Sometimes though, it’s a completely unexpected performance by a single player that can spark a team to life.
One of the mental processing tasks for the weekly UNU Baseball Swarm is to try to figure out which teams of also-rans in 2016 have turned things around in 2017. As exciting as last season was to watch, that now represents old data for swarm participants, and that “data” becomes more obsolete with each passing week of the 2017 campaign.
The Colorado Rockies are a great example of a team that has turned things around in 2017. Although last year’s team wasn’t good enough to make the post-season, it maintained a strong core of players in Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, and D. J. LaMahieu. Acquisitions such as Greg Holland and Ian Desmond and a career year by Mark Reynolds have helped propel the Rox to the top of the NL West.
The Rockies have never really wanted for hitting in the thin air of Denver, though, so there’s got to be something more going on. That “more” is a guy who’s seemingly burst out of nowhere onto the scene: the 22-year-old rookie taking the mound for Colorado tonight, Antonio Senzatela. Originally signed as a 16-year-old, Senzatela didn’t start ranking high in annual prospect lists until fairly recently. In 2017, he’s made the big jump from AA ball to The Show, but no matter; he’s now a leading candidate in the National League Rookie Of The Year race. As you can see by the replay above, the UNU Swarm is fairly confident that Senzatela will extend his winning ways tonight against a struggling Giants team.
Every week during the MLB season, Unanimous A.I. will be conducting swarms to pick the outcomes of games. If you’d like to either join a swarm or just get the predictions weekly, feel free to drop us a line below.
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