Mets ace sees injury rehab slow due to poor mechanics

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." 

Hefner elaborated on the point.

"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 said. "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, $75M 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.