Kodai Senga’s Rediscovered Firepower Offers Hope Amidst Mets’ Sluggish Start

The New York Mets are in the midst of a seven-game road trip that opened with them dropping two games to the St. Louis Cardinals. Now, they head to San Francisco for four games against the Giants. The Mets' offense has not been great in the early going outside of Opening Day, but one of the biggest takeaways from the Cardinals series was how good Kodai Senga was in the second contest.

Last season did not end well for Senga, with the Mets having to send him to AAA to end the season. Now, Senga looks like a new man. While it was just one start during what is now coined as overreaction week, the veteran right-hander looked really good in his outing against the Redbirds. He pitched six innings, giving up just two runs -- which you can argue would not have scored if Luis Robert Jr. did not misplay two balls in center field -- while striking out nine.

He used his fastball and cutter more than any pitch, which set up the forkball as a true out-pitch. His velocity topped out at 99.2 on his fastball, which is a strong explanation for how he generated a 30.4% whiff rate on the pitch.

But velocity only gets you so far; perhaps the most impressive statistic from his start was the average launch angle against his fastball, which sat at  -4° during the outing. By consistently attacking the upper third of the zone with that upper-90s heat, Senga forced hitters into weak, rolled-over contact, preventing them from squaring up the barrel. This vertical approach created the perfect tunneling effect for his fork ball which naturally drops out of the same plane.

Because hitters were so focused on catching up to the increased velocity of the heater and the horizontal movement of his cutter, the forkball's 38 inches of vertical drop became nearly impossible to track, leading to a chase rate well above his career average.