New York Mets at Cleveland Guardians

Throughout the past three years, as Kodai Senga struggled to prove both healthy and effective, some curiosity emerged regarding what he might look like as a high-leverage reliever. Initially, the Mets were reluctant to remove Senga from their rotation given his prior success there. More recently, the team didn’t possess the proper bullpen makeup to give him those reps. Now, with the Trade Deadline having come and gone for a non-contending Mets team, the proper ingredients are in place. For the foreseeable future, Senga will pitch in one-inning stints out of the bullpen, interim manager Andy Green said, giving club decision-makers a chance to evaluate him in that role. He debuted with a scoreless ninth inning Tuesday in the Mets’ 6-2 win over the Guardians. “I do think in his right arm is 100 miles an hour and a nasty forkball,” interim manager Andy Green said, “and that profile plays for a late-inning reliever.” Even when Senga was starting games, team officials encouraged him to rely more fully on his two elite pitches, his four-seamer and forkball. Though Senga never quite embraced that strategy, he may do so now, knowing he’ll no longer need to navigate through lineups multiple times. To that end, Senga opened Tuesday’s outing with six consecutive fastballs, reaching 98.8 mph on the radar gun before finally turning to another pitch. For the Mets, this is an experiment. Senga, who has little trade value, remains under team control for one more season at $15 million. At this point, the odds of him contributing to the rotation in a meaningful way are low, given his 8.66 ERA this season and the fact that he’s only pitched 163 1/3 innings since his first full year in New York in 2023, when he threw 166 1/3 innings. But if the Mets can coax any value out of him as a reliever, Senga could still become a useful part of their 2027 team. “We’ll see how he responds over the next few weeks, and we’ll reserve the right to pivot back to the rotation if we think that’s the right thing for him and for us,” Green said. “Where we’re at right now, just want to see him take the ball in one of the next couple of days for one inning, and attack it like you would expect a leverage reliever to attack it.” For Senga, the new role is a necessary evil. When Mets officials informed him of their decision on Tuesday afternoon, Senga relented, but reminded them that he signed as a starter and eventually wants to return to the rotation. “Whatever role is given to me, I’m going to thro