PORT ST. LUCIE — The Mets will open the 2024 season without their ace.
Kodai Senga will be out indefinitely after being diagnosed with a moderate strain of the posterior capsule in his throwing shoulder Thursday morning. The Mets expect the right-hander to start the season on the injured list.
Senga complained of shoulder and arm fatigue earlier this week at Clover Park. He threw a side session Tuesday but skipped Wednesday’s workout, instead getting examined by the trainers and sent for imaging.
“What this means right now is that we’re going to shut him down until his strength returns to normal levels,” said president of baseball operations David Stearns. “Once that happens, we can begin to ramp up and then go through his normal spring training progression.”
Although Senga does not have a history of shoulder injuries, he did experience similar discomfort years ago in Japan, around 2017. He stressed that he has no shoulder pain, but enough discomfort to keep him from pitching at a high level.
“Somewhere in my progression I started to feel it in my shoulder,” Senga said through translator Hiro Fujiwara. “To get through the season, I feel like taking a little bit of time off right now is going to help myself and the team.”
The Mets are unsure how long he will stay on the IL, but the injury should not require surgery.
“What I can say at this point, comfortably, is that we don’t expect Opening Day, but I do expect him to make a bunch of stars for us this year,” Stearns said. “This is not a surgical type problem. This is something with the rest and treatment, potentially an injection.”
Senga is in the second year of a five-year contract. Last year, his first since coming over from the Nippon Professional Baseball League in Japan, he went 12-7 with a 2.98 ERA in 29 starts, making his first All-Star appearance. He was named a finalist for the NL Rookie of the Year Award, finishing second behind Arizona’s Corbin Carroll and received Cy Young Award votes.
The Mets believe they have assembled a staff with enough depth to be able to absorb the loss of their ace, but unlike in other years, there isn’t another No. 1 pitcher in the rotation. Instead, the Mets have several back-end starters like left-handers Sean Manaea and Jose Quintana, and right-hander Adrian Houser and some who they are hoping will stick in the rotation, like right-handers Tylor Megill and Jose Butto and left-hander Joey Lucchesi.
Right-hander Luis Severino was one of the top pitchers in the league earlier in his career, but injuries and pitch-tipping issues limited him to only 18 starts last year and a 6.65 ERA.
The Mets are more likely to use a six-man rotation when Senga returns than add another pitcher from outside of the organization, ruling out high-profile free agent options of left-handers Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery.
“We’re going to ask people to step up,” Stearns said. “That’s what happens throughout the course of a baseball season. We knew we were not going to go through a full season with just five or six starters, so here we are. We’ve got plenty of options. I’m looking forward to watching that competition in camp and I’m confident that we’ll have guys step up.”
While the Mets flirted with the idea of adding Montgomery, another former Yankee, over the winter, they chose to prioritize the pursuit of another Japanese starter, Yoshinobu Yamamoto. When Yamamoto chose the Dodgers, the Mets decided not to give out any long-term contracts to pitchers. Should Snell or Montgomery be willing to accept a short-term contract, then it might entice the Mets to bite, but it’s unlikely. The Mets are being taxed at a 110% rate this season and their agent, Scott Boras, is seeking long-term deals.
“We’re always going to be opportunistic and hear what’s out there,” Stearns said. “I don’t think it really changes our thought process.”
This also doesn’t change the development plan for top prospects like Mike Vasil, Christian Scott or Dominic Hamel.
“I think we would look at all those guys as benefiting from increased minor league experience,” Stearns said. “So that’s still where I think, from an organizational perspective, we view them.”
Senga has continually made it clear that his priorities were helping the team win and staying healthy. The club went to great pains to aid his health last year, giving him extra days of rest to better mimic his schedule in Japan. The Mets are not concerned with how this could affect him moving forward.
Injured Mets ace Kodai Senga blames mechanical issue for shoulder woes
“Pitchers are going to get hurt,” Stearns said. “We are asking them to repeatedly train in an unnatural motion. And so at times, they’re going to get sore, they’re going to get stiff, they’re going to get tired. We hope that our players do exactly what Sega did, which is tell us about it so that we can diagnose it and move forward.”
