Kodai Senga threw a live batting practice session on April 29, seemingly a sign that the Mets hurler was making good progress on his way back from a moderate posterior capsule strain in his right shoulder. However, the latest updates on Senga’s status aren’t as promising, as Mets manager Carlos Mendoza and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner told reporters (including MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo) that Senga has dialed back his rehab to work out his pitching mechanics, which will come in the form of bullpen sessions and lighter sessions of catch. This will be the plan for at least the next week, Mendoza said, until Senga indicated that he was ready for more.
While Mendoza said that having Senga face live hitters could be a possible injury risk for either the pitcher or the batters, Mendoza repeatedly said that Senga was physically fine, and that the change of course in rehab work wasn’t a true setback. Hefner compared the situation to Spring Training, “where a guy is working through mechanics and feeling things out and he wants to throw another bullpen instead of a live [session], or push it a couple days. That’s what’s going on. He wants to work through some mechanical stuff, and he wants to feel good in the bullpen before he does maybe another live or goes into a game. He just wants to feel good before he starts that clock.”
Senga’s shoulder injury arose early in the Mets’ actual spring camp, and he began the season on first the 15-day injured list and then the 60-day injured list. The expectation was that Senga would need an extended ramp-up period to make up for all his lost prep work, and though the 60-day IL designation will keep him sidelined until at least late May, it now looks like it will be longer than that before Senga is a candidate to join New York’s rotation. Neither Mendoza or Hefner mentioned even a loose timeline for Senga’s return, leaving everything quite fluid.
After signing a five-year, $75MM deal to join the Mets in the 2022-23 offseason, Senga more than lived up to expectations in his first MLB campaign, posting a 2.98 ERA over 166 1/3 innings. Even though the Mets started a partial rebuild or retooling at last year’s trade deadline, the team could take solace in the fact that Senga was looking like a rotation staple, though his shoulder injury has now thrown a wrench into that plan.
As DiComo notes, there is a contractual element at play to Senga’s extended stint on the IL. The right-hander can opt out of his contract following the 2025 season if he amasses at least 400 innings in 2023-25. His workload last year left him with the very manageable figure of 233 2/3 remaining innings to trigger the opt-out, yet hitting that threshold now looks a bit more difficult if Senga misses an increasingly large chunk of the 2024 campaign.
Senga’s absence also has the more immediate problem of hampering the Mets’ chances of contending this season. Though new president of baseball operations David Stearns wasn’t overly aggressive with big-ticket moves this past winter, the organization still had some expectation of playing competitive baseball. The Mets haven’t exactly been on fire yet, but even with a 19-20 record, they are a game out in the crowded NL wild card race. This has been despite an inconsistent showing from the rotation, as Jose Quintana and Adrian Houser have both struggled badly.
How might Kodai Senga’s extended absence due to injury impact the Mets’ long-term strategy, considering his contractual opt-out clause and the team’s current competitive position in the NL wild card race?
I don’t think he’ll hit the requisite number of innings to enable that opt out clause; its 400 innings by end of 2025 and he’s only at 166
Adding 234 IP is very achievable over this season and the next..
Let’s say he pitches 70 this year, that leaves him at 163 to go
He is not the greatest inning eater but he would have to stay healthy for all of next year in order to get to that threshold
He threw 166+ last year when they were managing his innings and giving him extra days off. So getting to the 400 is still very doable for him. No sure thing, but still doable.
geoff – Agreed! With him missing let’s say a third of this season, they won’t need to pitch him on a 6-day schedule this year. So you figure maybe 21 starts this season for 12o innings?
Then if next year he repeats last year’s 166 innings he will have an extra 50 innings to work with. Definitely doable, provided he returns by early June and stays healthy from there through 2025.
@sad tormented There’s also no reason to think that he’s going to come back and in either 2024 or 2025 turn into a 180-190 inning / year stud (a stud at least by contemporary pitching standards). Is Senga really going to come back at the end of May 2024 then pitch at the pace he did in 2023, for both 2024 and 2025?
Seems unlikely.
He needs to pitch another 233.67 innings to escape the mediocrity of Queens. Say Senga comes back July 1st 2024 and pitches at that 166.33 inning / season pace. That would get him to 250 innings in 2024-2025, letting him beat the 400 ip mark for 2023-2025 by 16-1/3 innings.
It looks more likely that he’ll miss three more starts after coming back July 1 2024 and b/t July 1 2024 and the end of Sept 2025) and remain a Met for 2026-2027.—for better or for worse, giving the Mets nucleus another 30 and over player, whether they re-sigh Alonso, or not.
Actually, Alonso at 30 would be the youngster of that $100 million group.
Oldest nucleus in baseball. (They’re not good enough to warrant being called a “core.”)
The Mets are getting pretty old with lindor, nimmo, marte, Diaz, Alonso (if he resigns)
I feel like the cardinals are older just because they rely on people like goldy and Nolan for their offense and big surprise when they age the team gets worse
Astros have oldest core with altuve JV bregman abreu (I guess)
Most underrated stadium and fanbase in MLB.
@Trojan Toss
?
Citi is regrettable architectural vomitous, where the enormous archways (also known as “punting the design”) are a cheap copy of Ebbets Field and where the glazed inserts here wreck any resemblance to their Roman progenitors of classical antiquity, leaving the stadium nothing more than a pale, cheap imitation of far, far better buildings.
Capping the main entrance with the gigantic, vulgar, mismatched “citi FIELD” neon finishes off this debacle, this pallid Flatbush golem ‘masterminded’ by Fred and Jeff Wilpon, no less.
Fanbase is okay—but no more or less knowledgeable than most others. Comment sections for websites featuring the team more resemble gatherings of perpetually resentful adult children of alcoholics than they do baseball-related sites.
You can ask anybody. Verducci, Rosenthal, Slusser, Axisa, Rome, etc.
Figure he is back by June 15 and has 14-15 starts. He regularly goes 6 innings. That’s maybe 80 innings. Mets will make sure it’s no more than 65-70. Then Senga has to duplicate 2023 innings pitched. The Mets aren’t letting him reach 400 innings by end of 2025. Safe bet.
@seaver I wouldn’t push it from the standpoint that it’s a hard injury to recover from, not many players have came back from it’s worse than Tommy john
“He regularly goes 6 innings.”
Probably not right after missing almost half of the season with an injury. He’ll probably be on an 80-90 pitch restriction for his first handful of starts. So I agree with you. Might be a tough road to getting 400 innings.