While the way the season ended was fantastic, Decolati admits that the start of his first year of professional baseball had a few question marks sprinkled in there. During his junior year at Loyola Marymount (Calif.), he had posted his lowest batting average and the highest number of strikeouts of his college career. He wasn’t sure what that might do to his draft value but he was still selected in the sixth round by the Colorado Rockies.
“I was coming off a not-so-great spring,” Decolati recalled. “I tried to play in the spring with no expectations but I put pressure on myself.