Senga Kodai (New York Mets), who entered the Major League stage of his dreams, had an excellent debut season, becoming the fourth Japanese player to do so.
Senga started on the 28th (Korean time) in the home match against the 2023 Major League Baseball Miami Marlins in the second game of a doubleheader held at Citi Field in Fallashing, New York, USA, and pitched 96 pitches in 5 innings, allowing 3 hits (2 home runs), 3 walks, and 8. He fought back with a strikeout and 2 runs (2 earned).
Senga had always expressed his intention to advance to the major leagues during his time with the Softbank Hawks of the Japanese professional baseball team. However, despite obtaining ‘posting’ status, he was unable to achieve his dream of advancing to the big leagues as the Softbank club did not allow him to do so. Senga came up with a ‘silver trick’. In the case of Japan, foreign free agent qualifications are obtained one year after obtaining domestic free agent (free agent) qualifications, and an ‘opt-out’ clause was included in the process of signing an extension contract with Softbank.
Senga finally qualified as an ‘overseas free agent’ through the 2022 season, and was able to leave Softbank through ‘opt-out’. And he decided to challenge himself to advance to the major leagues, and prior to this season, Senga succeeded in signing a not-insignificant five-year contract worth $75 million (approximately 101.7 billion won). And he had a great debut season, putting in his best performance of the year. It is unclear whether he will be selected as ‘Rookie of the Year’, but he achieved results that would not be strange at all even if he were named Rookie of the Year.
Senga, who showed his potential by pitching in three exhibition games and recording a record of 1 win, 2 losses, and an ERA of 4.00, earned a spot in the Mets’ starting rotation, and pitched in 5 games last April, going 3 wins, 1 loss, and an ERA of 4.15. left a record of In particular, Senga’s main weapon, the ‘fork ball’, which has a huge drop, was nicknamed ‘ghost fork’ by major league fans and media. Based on the good momentum in April, Senga began to show a more stable performance in May with 2 wins, 2 losses, and an ERA of 2.79.
Senga recorded 1 win, 2 losses, and an ERA of 3.71 in June, and while watching key players, including Cy Young Award duo Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, leave the team ahead of the trade deadline, he recorded one win, an ERA of 1.93, and an ERA in July. In August, he cruised to 3 wins, 2 losses, and an ERA of 3.16. And although he did not achieve victory in the last game of the day, he finished the season with a performance that would leave his name in history as a Japanese major leaguer.
He pitched perfectly except for the home run. He got off to a bad start. Senga started the game by allowing a ‘leadoff home run’ when the 4th pitch forkball thrown to leadoff hitter John Bertie in the first inning ended up being a miss in the middle of the strike zone. But it didn’t take long to find stability. Senga shut down the Miami batting lineup of Jesus Sanchez, Garret Hampson, and Jacob Stallings in the second inning, and cruised through the third inning with two strikeouts.
His second disappointing scene was in the 4th episode. After hitting Jazz Chisholm Jr. with a fly ball to center field and Brian De La Cruz with a fly ball to shortstop, Senga was hit by a fastball high in the body by the follow-up hitter, Sanchez, and allowed a comeback by hitting his second home run of the day. Senga went on the mound in the 5th inning and got out of trouble by striking out Jake Berger on 1st and 2nd bases with 2 outs, and finished his final appearance of the season with 2 runs in 5 innings and a ‘no decision’.
It was a clear disappointment that he was not able to accumulate wins, but the pitching that ended the season was clearly powerful. According to Japan’s ‘Chunichi Sports’ and ‘Yomiuri Shimbun’, Senga recorded 202 strikeouts for the season by striking out 8 on this day, and was the fourth player in history to record 200 strikeouts in his first season of major league debut. He was the 13th Mets player and 31st player in history to have 200 strikeouts, and the second rookie in club history after Dwight Gooden.
Before Senga, there were three people who exceeded 200 strikeouts in their first year of major league debut: Hideo Nomo (236K in 1995), Daisuke Matsuzaka (201K in 2007), and Yu Darvish (221K in 2012). Senga recorded 202 strikeouts, surpassing Matsuzaka and ranking third in most strikeouts by a Japanese player in his first season, and with 10.9 strikeouts per nine innings, he ranked second after Hideo Nomo.메이저사이트
Senga had played 161⅓ innings before today’s game, and by adding 5 more innings on this day, he reached the required number of innings with 166⅓ innings. This marks the 5th Japanese major leaguer to leave his mark in history in 7 years, following Hideo Nomo, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish, and Kenta Maeda (2016).
The New York Post said, “The last two months of the Mets’ season were largely meaningless, but not completely meaningless. Amid the disappointment, Senga lived up to and exceeded expectations,” and added, “Schurezer and Verlander “Senga was the ace in the rotation, which was the center. Senga will not only be the Rookie of the Year, but he will also enter the Cy Young competition,” he praised.
Senga finished the season with 166⅓ innings in 29 games this year, with 202 strikeouts, 12 wins, 7 losses, and an ERA of 2.98. As of the end of the game on the 28th, he ranked 2nd in the National League in ERA, tied for 11th in wins, and tied for 7th in strikeouts. I put my name up. With Corbin Carroll (Arizona Diamondbacks) currently likely to win the Rookie of the Year award, it remains to be seen whether Senga can create an upset.