The Mets announced Tuesday that righty Kodai Senga has been placed on the 15-day injured list due to lumbar spinal inflammation. Right-hander Christian Scott has been recalled from Triple-A Syracuse in his place.
Senga, the 2023 National League Rookie of the Year runner-up, has seen his standing in the Mets organization drop precipitously in recent seasons. He missed the 2024 season due to injury, came back strong early in 2025 but crumbled over the summer. Although he finished the 2025 season with a 3.02 ERA, all of Senga’s production came in the season’s first three months. He struggled so much in the summer — 6.56 ERA, eight homers, 22 walks in 35 2/3 innings — that he consented to be optioned by the Mets.
The early returns in 2026 were promising. Senga yielded only two runs with an 11-to-1 K/BB ratio in 9 2/3 spring frames. He totaled 11 2/3 innings and held opponents to four runs with a 16-to-5 K/BB ratio in his first two starts this year. He looked to be getting back on track — at least until his third start of the season. Senga was tagged for seven runs, followed with another seven-run clunker (six earned), and lasted only 2 2/3 innings (three runs allowed) in his most recent start. Over his past three turns, he’s totaled just 8 1/3 innings but been shelled for 16 earned runs on the strength of five homers — all with more walks issued (eight) than strikeouts recorded (seven).
Senga averaged a hefty 97.4 mph on his four-seamer in his 2026 debut, but it’s been downhill since then. His average fastball dipped to 96 mph in his second start and sat between 95.1 mph and 95.7 mph in each of his three subsequent starts. That’s still better-than-average velocity, but a drop of two miles per hour since March 31 certainly seems to suggest that he’s been pitching at less than 100 percent.
The Mets haven’t provided a timetable for Senga’s return. That’ll presumably come closer to today’s game, when skipper Carlos Mendoza meets with the media. Regardless, today’s injury announcement continues a worrying downward trendline for Senga. His struggles have played a notable role in the Mets’ underperformance as a whole, and getting the right-hander healthy would go a long way toward the Mets digging themselves out of the awful 9-19 hole they’ve dug in the season’s first month.
Scott, once one of the game’s top pitching prospects, will look to play his own role in that turnaround. He entered the 2024 season considered to be the Mets’ top pitching prospect and one of the top 100 prospects in the sport. He had a decent debut that summer but wound up requiring Tommy John surgery that wiped out his entire 2025 campaign. Scott made his big league return last week against the Twins, and it didn’t go well; he faced 10 batters, walking five of them and plunking a sixth. He didn’t make it out of the second inning, and the Mets optioned him back to Triple-A the following day.
That’s not a great start to his big league campaign, but Scott has had more encouraging results in Syracuse. Granted, a 5.27 ERA isn’t much to look at, but it’s come in a small sample of 13 2/3 innings. Scott was roughed up for six runs through 3 1/3 frames in his first game action since 2024, but he rebounded with just two total runs allowed across 10 1/3 innings in his next two Triple-A starts. He’s sitting on a strong 17-to-2 K/BB ratio in Syracuse, though he’s also hit a pair of batters there. Still, Scott has a nearly 30% strikeout rate and is sitting 95.4 mph on his four-seamer this year — a full mile per hour north of the 94.1 mph he averaged back in 2024.
More to come.
