Mets All-Star pitcher garnering trade interest

New York Mets right-hander Kodai Senga has already garnered trade interest from multiple clubs, Will Sammon of The Athletic reports. The Mets aren’t known to be outright shopping the 2023 Rookie of the Year runner-up, but they’ve at least held discussions as interested teams have approached them.

Those who don’t follow the Mets closely might raise an eyebrow at the idea of trading a win-now club like the Mets pitcher who carries a flat 3.00 ERA in 285 innings across 52 MLB starts. That includes a tidy 3.02 ERA in 113 1/3 innings this past season. However, Senga’s standing in the organization fell in the second half of the 2025 campaign. After a shoulder injury limited him to just one start in 2024, Senga returned on a hot streak, posting a 1.74 ERA in his first 13 trips to the mound.

That superlative production never appeared fully sustainable. Senga’s 23.9% strikeout rate was good but not great, and his 10.6% walk rate was nearly two percentage points higher than average. His .251 average on balls in play and 88% strand rate both seemed ripe for regression. Still, metrics like FIP (3.24) and SIERA (4.28) felt he was still a quality or at least serviceable arm, even if his ERA was bound to take some steps back.

Senga sustained a calf strain in mid-June that sent him to the injured list for nearly one month. It’s a fairly innocuous-sounding injury, but whether he rushed back too soon or simply developed some bad mechanical habits while compensating for the resulting discomfort, the rest of Senga’s season was a nightmare. From July 11 through Aug. 31, he took the ball nine times and turned in a 5.90 ERA with a diminished 20.6% strikeout rate and an even more problematic 12.7% walk rate. And after allowing just 0.59 homers per nine innings in his first 13 starts, Senga’s HR/9 mark more than tripled during that miserable nine-start stretch (1.82).

The Mets optioned Senga to Triple-A — a move to which the right-hander had to consent — in hopes of getting him back on track. Senga, however, didn’t return to the majors in the season’s final month. The Mets rode a contingent of rookies down the stretch, leaning heavily on Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat in the rotation as they eventually narrowly missed a return to postseason play.

The fact that Senga didn’t return to the majors leaves him as something of a question mark. He made two starts in Triple-A following his demotion: one very good (six innings, one run, eight strikeouts, no walks) and another very poor (3 2/3 innings, four runs, two walks, one hit batter, four strikeouts). It’s difficult to glean exactly which version of Senga will show up. Outstanding as he was during his rookie season, injuries and this year’s second-half struggles have limited him to a total of 146 innings (majors and minors combined) across the past two seasons.

If the Mets had four healthy, mostly established other options in the rotation, it’d be easier to simply hope for a Senga rebound. They lack that stability, however. New York’s rotation will surely include McLean, who dazzled as a rookie. Veteran David Peterson finished with a respectable 4.22 ERA but faceplanted down the stretch, pitching to an 8.42 ERA over his final nine starts. Reliever-turned-starter Clay Holmes had a successful move to the rotation but only pitched beyond five innings four times in his final 18 appearances and posted ugly strikeout and walk rates in that time (15.8 K%, 10.6 BB%). Sean Manaea posted a 5.64 ERA in just 60 2/3 frames, thanks to injuries. Frankie Montas and Tylor Megill both had UCL surgery. Tong and Sproat have sizable upside but remain unproven.

Given all that tumult in the starting staff, rotation help is a natural priority for the Mets this winter. That only makes the uncertainty surrounding Senga all the more confounding. On the one hand, selling low on a pitcher who has often looked like a top-of-the-rotation arm and is at least ostensibly healthy seems like a risk the team can ill afford to take. On the other hand, Senga’s uneven 2025 season is a driving factor behind the Mets’ current rotation instability. If they’re not confident he can get back on track, moving him now would be prudent. It’d only become more difficult to deal Senga if he suffers an early injury or pitches poorly despite a clean bill of health.

The Mets owe Senga $14M in both 2026 and 2027. If he suffers a major elbow injury that requires surgery, a conditional $15M club option would be tacked onto the deal. A total guarantee of two years and $28M is eminently affordable, although the Mets are effectively paying double that amount since they’re being hit with a 110% tax on all dollars spent over the top tier of the luxury tax threshold.

Senga’s contract included a full no-trade clause covering the first three seasons of the five-year pact. That’s now shrunk to a limited 10-team no-trade list for the final two years of the deal. The list of teams to which he can block a move isn’t clear at present, but the Mets have more latitude to trade him than in the past.

New York certainly isn’t going to just dump the remainder of Senga’s contract for no return. There’s far too much upside, particularly relative to his modest salary. Any team looking to pry Senga loose will have to offer up some actual talent, though clearly not as much as Senga would command were he coming off a healthy, successful season. Then again, if Senga were coming off that type of season, the very idea of trading him would be a nonstarter for the Mets. Questions about his health, mechanics and results have at least nudged Senga onto the periphery of the trade market, but those same factors also make him an incredibly tricky asset on which to find common ground with another club.