Kodai Senga gives flailing Mets rotation a rare positive

Kodai Senga said Thursday night’s outing against the Braves was the best he’d felt since returning from the 15-day injured list last month. 

By the sixth inning, however, Senga found himself in a bit of a jam as he started to lose the aggressiveness and conviction he had been throwing with for a majority of the night. 

After walking Matt Olson, giving up a single to Drake Baldwin and allowing Michael Harris II to put runners on first and third on a sharp ground ball to center field, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza decided to give Senga the hook and hand the game over to the bullpen. 

Senga may have been the first Mets starter in over a week to complete five innings, but the relievers couldn’t finish the job in a 4-3 loss to complete the three-game series against Atlanta at Citi Field. 

“At that moment — 93 pitches, I think it was — I got a pretty, pretty good arm [in Tyler Rodgers] ready to go there, too,” Mendoza said when asked if his decision to take Senga out was because of the home run Ozzie Albies hit off him in the fourth or just how he felt at that time. “Just couldn’t get that last one there. But I thought Senga, overall, was really good.” 

There haven’t been many positives for the Mets to take away from this stretch of mounting losses, but Senga gave the club a slight glimmer of hope in an otherwise tough pitching stretch. 

And yet Senga, who has not gone six innings or more since June 6, had to watch from the sidelines as Albies ripped an RBI single to give the Braves a 2-1 lead. 

“I think it kind of goes back to the things we could have done better,” Senga said through a translator when asked if he expected to face Albies. “There was that previous at-bat, I threw a fastball to a guy that’s waiting for a fastball. Hit it out. And if maybe things were different, I would’ve had that last hitter. Maybe not, I don’t know. But it kind of goes back to the preparation part and making sure I can do everything I can right now so it helps in the future.” 

Having thrown just 74 pitches by the end of the fifth inning, Senga snapped the Mets’ five-game streak of starting pitchers failing to complete such a stretch. 

In 5 ²/₃ innings, the Japanese hurler allowed five hits, two earned runs, one walk, seven strikeouts and one home run. Of his 93 pitches, 61 were strikes. 

“I was able to throw all my pitches how I wanted to manipulate them,” Senga said after Rodgers, Ryan Helsley (who took the loss) and Edwin Díaz combined for the bullpen. “I think each pitch was up to the standard of competing with the hitter, and if I can continue this [moving] forward, I think I’ll be able to string along some good outings.”