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

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

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

It’s been an unpredictable journey for Senga, who, since coming in second in the National League 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 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 June, Pete Alonso threw high and wide as Senga scrambled to cover first. Senga leaped, 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 to return, it was clear something was very off.

Manager Carlos Mendoza could do little more than shrug when asked for updates, and Senga eventually accepted an assignment to Triple-A. After the Mets were eliminated in Game 162, he said, “I want to rebuild from step one. My body’s changed after this injury.”

That despondent mood, however, turned into that defiance we saw in Jupiter.

Senga didn’t put 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 an interpreter Saturday after a very strong training camp 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, three hits and no walks with two strikeouts in 2 2⁄3 innings. His pitch count was high — he threw 50 pitches in that span — and he again proved vulnerable to the long ball, allowing solo homers by Joshua Baez and Miguel Ugueto.

But that’s beside the point.

Spring training is for figuring things out, and Senga clearly was looking to hone his secondary pitches (he didn’t throw a single fastball in the third inning because, well, “no need to throw any more,” he said). He pounded the zone and established his fastball early — a key element in the ghost fork’s effectiveness.

The velocity he had flashed on the back fields at Clover Park came into play, too: His fastball dipped to an average 94.7 last year, but on Saturday, it averaged 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 a healthy Senga. He didn’t know the jovial pitcher with the quick smile for his teammates — the one 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 wants to play only every six days, because pitchers in NPB 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.”

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 have to 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 itself 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.