The Mets gave Kodai Senga his first look as a leverage reliever on Tuesday night, using him in the bottom of the ninth after trading away several relievers ahead of the deadline. He entered with a 6-2 lead against the Guardians and finished the inning without damage, a new late-game assignment for a pitcher who still sees himself as a starter.
The move landed now because the Mets had already thinned their bullpen by dealing Luke Weaver, Brooks Raley and Huascar Brazobán, leaving a different path for the final outs. Devin Williams stayed on the roster, but the late-inning mix around him changed enough that Senga became the team’s latest answer in a role that once would have been hard to imagine for a pitcher signed to a five-year, $75MM deal in December of 2022.
Senga’s first inning out of the bullpen showed the shape of the experiment. He got Steven Kwan to ground out, walked Jo Adell, then recovered to get Chase DeLauter to line out and Nathaniel Lowe to fly out. It was not a save chance in the traditional sense, but it was leverage in the way clubs define it now: the game was still in hand, the margin still mattered, and the inning still carried more weight than mop-up work.
That distinction matters because the Mets are not asking Senga to reinvent himself from scratch. They want him to lean more on a four-seamer that has averaged around 96 miles per hour in his big league career and a forkball that can miss bats when he is fresh. Andy Green said he sees “100 miles an hour and a nasty forkball” in Senga’s right arm, the kind of profile he believes can play in late innings. The organization has been working him in long relief since the shift, but the real test is whether short bursts can sharpen what has already been there.
The friction is obvious. Senga still wants to start, and he did not hide that. Through an interpreter, he said he would throw in whatever role the team gives him, even if he privately prefers the rotation. He went further, saying that if he told the Mets he wanted to be a starter, they could simply point to his numbers and he would have no answer. That is the reality hanging over the move: the club is testing him in a spot he did not ask for because his recent starts have not held up.
The numbers explain why the Mets are open to the switch. Senga made 29 starts in 2023 with a 2.98 earned run average, a 29.1% strikeout rate and a 44.7% ground ball rate, but 2024 was wrecked by a shoulder capsule strain and a calf strain, leaving him with only one regular season appearance. He then posted a 6.56 ERA in eight starts after the All-Star break in 2025 and agreed to be optioned to the minors. This year began with 20 earned runs allowed in 20 innings over five starts, and after returning from the injured list in June he made two more poor starts before moving to the bullpen. That is the backdrop for a team trying something different without saying it has given up on what he used to be.
What happens next is the question that will shape both the Mets’ bullpen and Senga’s standing going forward. If he handles these leverage innings well, the club can keep using him where the innings matter most and decide later whether that path lasts into the rest of the season or into the offseason. If he does not, the Mets will have spent a deadline week opening the door for him only to close it again almost as quickly.
