The Mets are still looking to add pitching, outfielders

Plus, the case for the Mets to keep Kodai Senga

🎉 Happy New Year, from all of us at Just Mets! 🎉

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What’s up with the Mets? 🍎

• With Tatsuya Imai’s posting window closing this Friday, January 2nd, the Mets are reportedly ‘on the periphery’ of his sweepstakes (Yahoo Sports)

• Mets VP/Assistant GM Eduardo Brizuela said the team is still looking to add two starting pitchers and two outfielders, and will explore all options from free agency to farm system (Empire Sports Media)

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Rumor Mill 💨

• Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen said that Ketel Marte trade speculation will be “put to an end” sooner than later, stating that he doesn’t anticipate a deal coming together (MLB.com)

• As with Kazuma Okamoto, Imai has also been holding meetings in Los Angeles with interested teams (MLB.com)

• The Braves reportedly signed former Met José Azocar to a minor league deal (Just BB Media)

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The Just Mets Podcast 🎙️

ICYMI: Rich and Andrew said goodbye to 2025 by answering some questions from our lovely subscribers.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify

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Should Kodai Senga really be considered expendable? ✍️

Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

As the 2025-26 MLB offseason plods along, it’s been accompanied by an almost overwhelming amount of discourse. Trade ideas, megadeal predictions (demands), and calls for firings have echoed through the Mets fanbase in particular – I don’t need to rehash what’s already happened thus far.

However, there’s been one particular blade in the ever-churning rumor mill that seems to be pulling extra weight as of late: that of Kodai Senga’s immediate future with the franchise.

The idea of trading Senga has gained quite a bit of traction recently, and fairly so – after two seasons marred by injury with a lot of volatility betwixt IL stints, it’s hard to blame David Stearns for fielding phone calls about the embattled starter. For weeks now, Senga’s alleged league-wide perception as a ‘Buy Low’ candidate has persisted, suggesting that everyone did indeed notice the glaring issues that were on display in his second-half starts. Recent reporting that the Mets remain in pursuit of multiple arms via multiple avenues this winter (cited above) has only added fuel to this long-burning gossip fire, perhaps more so now than ever before.

Still, despite the surface-level evidence to the contrary...I firmly believe trading Senga this winter would be a mistake.

The 2025 Mets season really is an excellent case study in just how quickly things can change during a baseball season. It was a tale of two years for the entire team, but especially for Senga: before he hurt his hamstring in mid-June, he had been nothing short of disgusting on the mound. Through his first 13 starts, he posted an MLB-leading 1.47 ERA with a 1.13 WHIP over 77.2 innings of work. Senga was striking hitters out at a 23.4% clip, down from his 2023 baseline of 29.1% but accompanied by an improvement in walk rate and a near-90% strand rate.

While his 3.21 first-half FIP suggests he was the beneficiary of some excellent defense and a bit of luck (ironic, considering their defense ended up being really bad, and his season took a turn on bad defense), Senga offered plenty to love to start the season. Yes, his fastball velocity was down a tick, and naturally so were his strikeouts, but he was able to limit damage by sequencing his pitches more effectively and manufacturing outs. Senga was especially good at limiting damage on contact in those initial outings, delivering an elevated ground-ball rate (54.5%) alongside far less frequent hard contact (30.3%, career avg. ~34%). Essentially, though his ‘stuff’ may have dipped a bit at the outset, Senga found ways to work around the zone and get outs without allowing more unnecessary baserunners than usual.

Back to the hamstring injury: Senga has quickly seemed to develop a bit of a reputation for being ‘made of glass.’ After back-to-back seasons with serious injuries and a frustrating rehab process that led to a demotion last year, I completely understand where that glass-boned narrative is coming from, but I want to push back on it slightly.

First of all, regarding the hamstring itself, it’s not like Senga took a weird step off the mound during an otherwise standard delivery and then just crumpled – he was trying to make a play on an errant throw.

New York Post

Perhaps I’m being too literal here, but this specific injury instance screams more ‘freak accident’ than ‘fragile’ to me. If this hadn’t happened, who’s to say Senga wouldn’t have continued on his Cy Young pace?

Of course, maybe something else would’ve happened too. Who knows in the end.

I won’t be dishonest and pretend Senga’s injury history doesn’t concern me. He’s dealt with multiple issues up and down his body in just the last two seasons, and his rehab last season endured repeated setbacks. However, though these injuries are a noteworthy pattern, can we really safely say that they’re predictive of how the rest of Senga’s career is going to go? Though he’s likely showing some natural signs of wear-and-tear, I’m unwilling to associate all of his regression purely to physical issues, purely because I’d argue that it’s also early enough in his transition to MLB that these injuries could have significantly disrupted his acclimation process.

This is where the inherent psychological component to all of this comes into play. Senga has expressed multiple times in the past that adhering to a strict routine is crucial for him to sustain high-performance output; obviously, he has not had that luxury for the bulk of his time in MLB. Sure, you could point to Senga being so dependent on routine (and thus so easily disrupted) as an inherent negative in his player profile, and to an extent, I agree. However, I still think his broader statistical picture reinforces the general argument for patience.

It’s well-established that Senga comes with some uncertainty – Stearns himself said as much in at least one post-season presser. Even so, if the Mets were to trade him, they wouldn’t be swapping him for anything of substantive value. The Mets are looking to re-establish a new core, and Senga’s contract fits the new window that seems to have been established; by trading him, they would be swapping recently demonstrated upside for presumably an underwhelming or totally speculative return. And with the Justin Willard era on the horizon, why not keep Senga in Queens to see how he fares under new pitching direction, even if it’s just through the trade deadline?

Ultimately, I just don’t think we as fans have seen enough of Senga to know exactly what we’ve got with him, and Stearns must feel the same on some level; otherwise, a deal would likely already have been done. Stearns has proven he’s not one for sentiment, so it’s likely the height of Senga’s ceiling and not his impassioned plea to stay in Queens that has kept the ghost fork in town so far. After all, the one full season of data we do have on Senga is pretty damn good, despite it being three years in the rearview, and his 2025 got off to an even better start than that 2023 debut season did. Though it could certainly be argued that the last two years have showcased more fragility and volatility than not, his overall career numbers still look solid, and projection models forecast a fine season for Senga in 2026.

Senga is just one of several unknowns the Mets will carry into the New Year. What is known is that this team needs pitching — for my money, it would be shortsighted to create yet another hole in this rotation right now, especially if that hole comes at the expense of another recent All-Star.

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Around the League 🚩

• The Angels and Anthony Rendon agreed to a restructured contract, effectively ending his tenure in Anaheim (The Athletic)

• The Angels also signed Kirby Yates to a one-year, $5 million deal (MLB.com)

• The Yankees’ signing of Amed Rosario is now official (MLB.com)

• The Dodgers traded LF Esteury Ruiz to the Marlins for RHP Adriano Marrero (MLB.com)