LAKELAND, Fla. — Kodai Senga has been cleared for takeoff.
Sort of.
The Mets ace underwent imaging on his injured shoulder Tuesday and received medical clearance to resume throwing. However, the Mets are exercising caution and need to see the right-hander pass their own internal tests before they allow him to begin a throwing program.
“The results were very, very encouraging,” manager Carlos Mendoza said Thursday at Publix Field at Joker Marchant Stadium. “The inflammation is gone, so he’s pretty much cleared. Now, it’s up to our internal testing. Now it’s up to our internal testing. Making sure he passes all the power tests, the shoulder strength and things like that before he starts a throwing program, which should happen within the next week.”
The throwing program would be the first step toward a resumption of his spring training progression.
“But everything is good — clear,” Mendoza said. “Once he’s passed all of our internal testing, he’ll begin a throwing program.”
Senga has been sidelined since late February with a mild strain of the posterior capsule in his shoulder. Doctors advised him to stop throwing until the inflammation clears up and he received a platelet-rich plasma injection to help speed along the recovery.
The process has been slower than anticipated. The hope was that Senga could start throwing around the fourth or fifth week of spring training, but the inflammation did not subside as quickly as the Mets hoped it would, even with the PRP injection, which is a regenerative treatment that speeds along the process of healing damaged tissue.
This update comes a week after president of baseball operations David Stearns laid out an amended timeline for the 31-year-old Japanese starter. Stearns was careful not to use the word setback and expressed optimism about an early May return.
“We have a lot of objective information to use in this process,” Stearns said last week. “Timeframes are often our best understanding, best suggestion, and in many ways, the best guess at times of diagnosis. I’m always going to try and provide timeframes to you guys because I know you want them and it’s helpful. Sometimes it’s going to be shorter, sometimes it’s going to be longer. This time it’s longer than we anticipated on the front end.”
The Mets named left-hander Jose Quintana as the team’s Opening Day starter in place of Senga. The injury created a competition for the fifth spot in the starting rotation and right-hander Tylor Megill won the spot over right-hander Jose Buttó. The Mets reassigned Buttó to minor league camp earlier this week.
The injury came with enough time for the Mets to fully evaluate all of their internal options and make a decision. Luis Severino will line up behind Quintana, with right-hander Adrian Houser, Sean Manaea and Megill behind him.
Mendoza said Senga is “feeling good” and recovering well. The injury could have led to something more severe had Senga not reported his arm fatigue immediately. The team took all of the proper steps by sending him for imaging immediately, despite feeling as though he could have continued throwing.
But the injury was affecting his ability to command the baseball. Senga has made it a goal to decrease his walk rate and throw more strikes this season, so he didn’t want to take any chances.
“We knew from the beginning that as soon as he got that injection, it was going to be, for sure, three weeks, and then we were going to reassess,” Mendoza said. “Here we are, making sure that he clears all the hurdles. We’re very happy with where he’s at.”
Senga signed a five-year $75 million contract with the Mets in December 2022. In his first year in North America, the former Nippon Professional Baseball star went 12-7 with a 2.98 ERA in 29 starts. He was named a finalist for the NL Rookie of the Year Award and received Cy Young Award votes.
The ace spot is still his when he returns, even if he doesn’t quite care for the title. The Mets have faced similar injury issues with Opening Day starters in each of the last two years, so April will provide a test to see just how deep the starting staff truly is.
