Laura Albanese: Mets' Kodai Senga has new, upbeat demeanor a welcome sign in spring training

JUPITER, Fla. — Kodai Senga first threw the ghost and then became one.

But Saturday in his spring training debut, he reemerged – flesh, blood, and defiantly filthy.

It’s been an unpredictable journey for Senga, who, since coming in second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2023, has been the greatest enigma on this Mets roster. There was that inspiring first campaign, and then the spate of injuries – a shoulder strain that cost him the beginning of 2024, the calf injury later that year, and then the hamstring strain in 2025 that affected his body, his mechanics, and even his mind.

Throughout it all, the man who made his name behind the “ghost fork,” became a specter himself. The first half of 2025 was the ghost of Senga past – dominant, with a sterling 1.39 ERA that announced that the Mets had regained their ace. Then, in a June game against the Nationals, Pete Alonso threw high and wide as Senga scrambled to cover first; Senga leapt, collapsed and was never really the same.

He was in the clubhouse sporadically after that, quiet and certainly frustrated, but as the Mets continued their catastrophic collapse, and Senga attempted his return, it was clear something was very off. Manager Carlos Mendoza could do little more but shrug when asked for updates, and eventually Senga accepted an assignment to Triple-A and. After the Mets had been eliminated in Game 162, he made a brief appearance. “I want to rebuild from step one,” he said then.

“My body’s changed after this injury.”

Despondence, though, turned into that defiance we saw in Jupiter.

Senga didn't put a new paint on the walls this offseason. He tore things down to the studs - throwing away the old parts himself that don’t serve this version of who he is now.

“I know that my body is different from where I was three years ago,” he said via interpreter Saturday after a very strong spring training debut at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium. “I’m not really trying to get back to that…I feel really good. I’ve felt really good. I’m able to attack all the things I wanted to work on from last year and I think that’s flourishing now.”

If you look at the scorecard, you might think that Senga’s outing left something to be desired. He allowed two runs on three hits with no walks and two strikeouts over 2 2/3 innings. His pitch count was high – he threw 50 pitches in that span – and he again proved vulnerable to the longball, allowing solo homers to Joshua Baez and Miguel Ugueto.

But that’s frankly beside the point.

Spring training is for figuring things out, and Senga was clearly looking to hone his secondary pitches (he didn’t throw a single fastball in the third because, well, “no need to throw anymore,” he said). He pounded the zone and established his fastball early – a key element in the ghost fork’s effectiveness. The velocity he’s flashed in Clover Park backfields came to play, too: His fastball dipped to an average 94.7 last year, but Saturday, it averaged at 96.7 (even in 2023, that pitch was 1 mph slower than that). He topped out at 98.8.

“It’s exciting,” Mendoza said. “It’s not something that I’ve seen the two years that I’ve been here…It’s not only the 98, but his ability to spin it, too…He’s pretty high (with his confidence) because he’s feeling good. We’ve got to keep it there.:

There’s also a notable change in his demeanor. Mendoza has never known healthy Senga. He didn’t know the jovial pitcher with the quick smile for his teammates – the who had a mini-mart of Japanese snacks in his locker.

“You see a Kodai Senga in the clubhouse smiling,” Mendoza said. There’s “more interaction with teammates. He’s not in the training room (needing to get) treatment. He’s just a healthy player that’s able to do a lot of different things. It affects the personality. It’s definitely a different version of his personality this year.”

And that really could make all the difference. There’s this misconception that Senga only wants to play every six days, because pitchers in the NPO are used to smaller workloads, but that’s simply not the case. He’s “enigmatic” because he hasn’t been healthy, and that means consistency is all but impossible to come by.

"I've never said that I can't throw on regular rest," he said. "Nothing has changed."

But this new version of Senga, if successful, has the ability to reshape this rotation in pivotal ways. The Mets were destroyed by their pitching last year and looked to soothe that wound by trading for Freddy Peralta. But at his best, Senga is a true-blue ace, and his reemergence is a gift the Mets weren’t really counting on. Throw in Nolan McLean, who has all the makings of a superstar, a healthy Sean Manaea, a David Peterson who doesn’t carry an entire staff on his back, and Clay Holmes, now fully integrated as a starter, and you’ve got yourself a formidable rotation.

Naturally, that’s best-case scenario stuff, and baseball is rarely bedfellows with the best case of anything, But…what if?

“In this industry, you either do or you don’t,” Senga said. “I haven’t proven anything while (I’ve been) over here and I still have a lot to prove.”

But not in the old ways. That didn’t work.

“It’s a new me,” he said. “And I’m trying to find new beginnings.”

Forget the ghost version of Senga. This version is flesh and blood, and very ready to make himself seen.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.