Mets 2023 projections: Kodai Senga

It’s hard to know what the upside for the 2023 Mets is without knowing what to expect from Kodai Senga. The good news is that on a team with Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, there’s no pressure on him to be an ace. The bad new is that Senga is essentially replacing Chris Bassitt, who gave the club 181.2 IP and 15 wins a season ago. Now, Bassitt himself was extremely unlikely to duplicate those numbers. What chance does a guy traveling half way around the world to pitch in a foreign country and face the best hitters on the planet have? Here’s what the computer models think:

ATC — 148 IP, 3.76 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 158 Ks, 17 HR
RotoCh – 156 IP, 3.63 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 167 Ks
Steamer – 157 IP, 3.76 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 177 Ks, 19 HR
THE BAT – 148 IP, 4.58 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, 140 Ks, 20 HR
ZiPS — 140.1 IP, 3.46 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 142 Ks, 15 HR

There was no Marcel forecast for Senga. It caught me a little off guard, in a good way, how similar most of the other systems were on a guy who’s never pitched in organized ball in this country. The outlier was THE BAT, which was much more pessimistic about Senga’s chances for success in his debut season in this country. That projection doesn’t feel unjustified to me. If anything, it’s a bit of a surprise that there aren’t more bears among the forecasts.

Senga has legitimate MLB velocity, comfortably throwing in the 96-97 mph range with the ability to dial it up a few miles faster. It’s a very straight fastball, though. That’s not a problem if his other pitches are working. His out pitch is a splitter that was considered so good that it was dubbed, “the ghost fork,” for how it seemingly disappeared. In an effort to adjust to the mounds and the ball, as well as some issues with tendinitis, Senga did not throw his splitter much in Grapefruit League play. That makes his Spring Training numbers even more unreliable than most. But, despite not throwing his out pitch very much, Senga had 10 Ks in 9 IP. That’s encouraging.

He pitched in an intrasquad game on Monday and threw the ghost fork and ended up with 9 Ks in 5 IP. There was no boxscore for the game, so we don’t know who he faced. Could have been all minor leaguers. Also, we don’t know how many walks he allowed. In Grapefruit League action, Senga had 5 BB in 9 IP. Walks are definitely a concern. As recently as 2020, Senga had a 4.1 BB/9. However, his rate stats have been in the 3.0 range the past two seasons.

It’s easy to dream on Senga. The fastball/splitter combo is potentially plus-plus all by itself. But he’s also throwing a cutter and a slider. It’s likely he throws the cutter to LHB and the slider to RHB, giving him three pitches to utilize against a hitter, regardless of which side he hits from in the box. A straight fastball is less of a concern if batters have to worry about movement with two other pitches.

My opinion is that if he’s able to throw strikes, he’s going to dominate. If he has the WHIP that ZiPS forecasts, he’ll have a sub-3.00 ERA. Here’s my totally biased forecast for Senga this year:

155 IP, 3.25 ERA, 1.200 WHIP, 180 Ks, 13 HR