New York Mets right-hander Kodai Senga was scratched at the base of his right index finger on his scheduled start Saturday due to discomfort. the club said. He later underwent imaging tests that revealed tendinitis. He is looked at from day to day, according to the team. For his part, manager Buck Showalter told reporters after the game that Senga likely would have gone through the injury had it occurred during the regular season.
Earlier this offseason, the Mets signed the 30-year-old slinger from Japan to a five-year, $75 million contract as a free agent. Senga was an accomplished moundsman in Japan during his 11-year career at NPB, and in 2023 he is expected to stabilize the middle of the New York rotation behind Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer. In his first and only start this spring, Senga allowed a run to a hit in two innings of work against the Cardinals on March 5. Over that span, he hit two and walked two.
CBS Sports ranked Senga as the 23rd best free agent available this offseason, writing the following:
Senga, 29, is expected to seek a major league contract this winter after spending the first 11 seasons of his career with the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League. He’s an accomplished right-hander who has posted a 1.89 ERA and a 3.18 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 148 innings this season. Senga’s best pitches are his lively mid-’90s fastball and his devastating “ghost” forkball, a true out-pitch in the majors or elsewhere. With this combo, he’s able to climb stairs and turn up the heat before burying the fork. (If he lands in Chicago, maybe his nickname should be The Bear?) He also throws a decent curveball.
The Senga news comes not long after the Mets lost veteran right-hander Jose Quintana he was diagnosed with a small stress fracture in his chest. Quintana still doesn’t have a clear timeline for his return. Needless to say, not being two starters back even halfway through spring training is far from optimal. On the positive side there is no arm injury and opening day is still more than two weeks away.