The first pitch Kodai Senga threw in his first start of the season was a 98 mph fastball. The second pitch from the Mets’ right-hander: Another 98 mph fastball.
In his six-inning outing on Tuesday in St. Louis, Senga's average velocity on the 36 four-seam fastballs he threw was 97.4 mph, which is up 2.7 mph from his average velocity last season. The added speed got him seven whiffs on 23 swings and could be a huge addition to his arsenal.
“Hitters gotta get ready for that type of velocity, and then on top of that, you got so much movement from some of the other pitches, whether it’s the fork ball, the cutter, the slider, he’s got so much that can keep hitters off-balance,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “The velo, that’s a plus there.”
When’s the last time he had a fastball this good? Senga shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t remember,” he said, speaking through an interpreter, after the Mets’ 3-0 loss to the Cardinals in which the righty struck out nine.
"He was really good today,” Mendoza said of the 33-year-old’s outing.
“From the very first pitch, you saw the velo, and for him to be able to maintain the velocity throughout the outing. Up to 90 pitches and you [still] saw 97 [mph],” Mendoza said.
Senga, who said at spring training that he felt much more physically better entering the season, pointed to being more in control to getting the extra giddy-up on his heater.
“Just controlling my body,” he said. “Manipulating what I need to manipulate. The mechanics need to work a certain way to get that velo, and I haven’t been able to do that. But this year, and today, I was able to do so.”
For the night, his average fastball velocity never went lower than 97 mph in each of his six innings, and the final pitch he threw was a 98 mph heater at the knees for a called strike three as he struck out the final three batters he faced.
“That first inning, I wasn’t able to manipulate everything as well as I thought, first time back out on a big league mound in a little bit. But other than that, felt pretty good,” Senga said, adding that it took a bit of time for him to get a feel for the “ghost” fork, but it eventually got “better and better” in the later innings.
The forkball only got six swings on 15 offerings, and not one called strike, but Cardinals hitters whiffed four times, good for the put-away pitch on three strikeouts.
The cutter was his second-most used pitch of the night, and it also saw an uptick (0.9 mph) in average velocity, while getting him his highest called strike plus whiff rate at 38 percent.
“I thought that the cutter was really good,” Mendoza said. “He was pretty good. That’s exciting there.”
Of course, three batters in the third inning cost him, as he left a few pitches up in the zone, allowing a double and a single on the fastball before Ivan Herrera got a bit of a hanging slider for a two-run double.
“Hindsight is 20/20,” Senga said. “It’s a mixture of pitch selection [and] location, but at the end of the day, giving up the first runs in the game isn’t always a good sign. So that’s something to work out.”
But that was his only blemish of the night as he didn’t allow a hit over his final 12 outs. And the positives far outweighed the negatives, especially when factoring in LuisRobert Jr.’s misplays in center, which accounted for the first hit of the third and allowed a runner to advance into scoring position on an errant throw after the second.
And from where Senga ended last season – a 6.56 ERA as he allowed 29 runs (26 earned) over 35.2 innings over his final eight starts before being sent to the minors – his performance in the first start of the 2026 campaign represented a positive step.
“The last time I was out on the mound and in the dugout, I had to be thinking about my body and making sure it’s gonna do what I need it to do, but on the flip side, today, I didn’t have to worry about any of that,” Senga said. “I can face the hitters, and it really felt like I’m a starting pitcher again.”
All of that tracked with what the Mets saw from him during the spring, and that is what the skipper is expecting.
“If he’s healthy, we’re gonna see that a lot,” Mendoza said. “I think a lot of guys saw [the] 2023 [version]. We just gotta make sure that he recovers well, and then that he continues to feel good. Because that was electric there.”
Senga called it a “great start to the year” that had him feeling much more like a pitcher.
“Being out there, and I can start to deduce, ‘What is this hitter thinking? What are they looking for? What’s something that they’re not looking for?’” he said. “Being out there and able to do that, it’s a good feeling. I’m excited.”
