It is natural to assume that Kodai Senga is going to take another step forward in 2024, his sophomore campaign in Major League Baseball with the Mets.
His rookie season could not have gone much better even after the majority of the support system in Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer was traded away. The 31-year-old right-hander garnered Rookie of the Year and Cy Young consideration, posting a 2.98 ERA in 166.1 innings, and striking out 202 batters in the process behind the vaunted ghost forkball.
Senga managed the high level despite a completely revamped workload. In a decade in Japan, he would pitch just once a week for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks and threw more than 148 innings in a season just twice.
The Mets tweaked his schedule last season as to not too much on his plate, though it’s uncertain if there are plans to flirt with as large a workload as, say, 180 innings in 2024.
“It’s going to be a lot of conversations,” first-year manager Carlos Mendoza said. “It’s going to be day to day, not only with him but with [pitching coach Jeremy Hefner]. A lot of people are going to be involved with the decision-making as well, whether it’s his trainers, our trainers, and all that, but it’s going to be fluid.”
It is more than likely that the Mets are going to institute a six-man rotation this season and not just because of Senga. Luis Severino has been hampered by injuries for years, Sean Manaea spent a large portion of 2023 in the bullpen, Jose Quintana is coming off half a season after undergoing rib surgery in the spring, and Adrian Houser has pitched more than 111 innings just once in the last five years.
Joey Lucchesi, Jose Butto, David Peterson, and Tylor Megill will be given a shot to assume that No. 6 role in the rotation to preserve the top-five arms. But more innings from Senga in 2024 will only be a good thing. Fangraphs even has him projected for 182 innings this year.
