The Mets are struggling offensively - what's the root cause?

Plus, while the Mets lost on Tuesday, Kodai Senga had an encouraging season debut

What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️

• The Mets got shut out by the Cardinals on Tuesday night 3-0 (box)

• Kodai Senga was terrific in his season debut, allowing just two runs on four hits while striking out nine Cardinals in six innings of work

• Senga’s fastball sat at 97 mph throughout the outing; he’s the first Mets pitcher to complete six innings so far this season

• Mets hitters were not as productive, mustering merely three hits all night

• Juan Soto provided the bulk of the offense with two hits, including a double

• Dicky Lovelady allowed a run in his two innings of relief; he has appeared in four innings this season, allowing at least one run per outing

• The Mets hired JD Martinez in a special advisory role to the front office

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Play of the Game ⭐️

In the Mets’ best run-scoring opportunity of the evening, Jared Young hit a line drive straight to St. Louis shortstop Masyn Winn, who then threw out Bo Bichette at first base. The weakly-hit ball left Young’s bat at just 74 mph — a common theme for the Mets with runners on base so far this season.

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Down on the Farm 🌾

• 3B Ronny Mauricio (AAA): 1-for-3, HR, K

• LF MJ Melendez (AAA): 1-for-3, 2B

BOX SCORES

Triple-A SYR | The rest of the MiLB season starts tomorrow, 4/2

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Today’s Game 🗓

Match-up: Mets (3-2) vs. Cardinals (3-2)

Where: Busch Stadium – St. Louis, MO

Starters: RHP Freddy Peralta (1-0, 7.20 ERA) vs. RHP Matthew Liberatore (0-0, 1.80 ERA)

When: 1:15 PM EDT

Where to Watch: SNY

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Kodai Senga looks great. The bats do not. ✍️

(© Jeff Curry-Imagn Images)

Last night, the Mets were handed their first shutout of the season. It wasn’t a purely putrid effort, but save for Kodai Senga’s performance, there was little to get excited about.

Let’s start with the bad, because there’s not much more to say that hasn’t already been evident to anyone watching these games: these bats feel next to lifeless.

Statistically, they’re stacking up okay, incredibly ranking solidly among the league’s top 10 offensive units in several key metrics. However, some bigger red flags have me concerned early on.

The main issue is that the Mets just aren’t making enough hard contact with the ball to do anything of substance with the on-base traffic they’re creating. Entering yesterday’s contest, the Mets ranked fifth in team OBP (.349), ninth in hits, runs, and RBI, and tenth in team wRC+; they’re also hitting .254 as a group (8th). Not necessarily a bad place for your offense to be to open the year.

However, when the heat’s been turned up, they’ve largely wilted. With runners in scoring position, this group is hitting just .208; with two outs, that team average drops to .143, regardless of runner situation. They’re generating a soft contact rate north of 20%, with an average exit velo of just 87 mph across the lineup — that’s simply not going to get base runners moving consistently.

Funny enough, the Mets had a ton of hard-hit balls last night; 50% of their batted balls left their bats at 95+ mph, and they rank 12th in overall hard-hit rate. However, considering most of their batted balls have been hit on or close to the ground (team avg. 9° launch angle), it’s not at all surprising they’re not bringing more runs across, even on nights of technically ‘good’ raw contact all over the lineup.

There’s only so much analysis to do here at the moment, but familiar patterns are revealing themselves early. Perhaps it’s time for new staff member JD Martinez to take over in the cage, just to see what happens. (I know Mark Vientos would be grateful.)

(© Joe Puetz-AP Photo)

Now, onto the good…no, great. Kodai Senga was great.

Despite a tantalizing spring, Senga entered the season with multiple question marks: would he be able to recreate his training camp performance in games that mattered? Would his increased velocity hold up in-game? Would he last longer than even four innings against MLB hitters?

So far, asked and answered.

Over six innings, Senga allowed two runs on four hits, three of which came consecutively in the third inning. Despite some location issues throughout the night (60% overall strike rate), Senga only issued three walks alongside his nine strikeouts. He finished his evening with a whopping 39% whiff rate.

Senga had quite a few whiff weapons working last night — his fastball, sweeper, and ghost fork accounted for 14 of his 17 swing-and-misses. His stuff was operating all over the zone, but it was at its best playing up. Even on batted balls, the best contact against him was (unsurprisingly) in the middle of the zone; when Senga effectively worked the corners and edges, even the hardest hit balls didn’t leave Cardinal bats on an ideal trajectory.

Senga’s whiff chart from Tuesday night. (Baseball Savant)

Senga deployed the bulk of his pitch mix in his outing, and just about everything offered something to like. His fastball velocity, sitting three ticks faster than his 2025 average, is encouraging enough; it looks even better when you see he sustained that 97 mph velo across all six innings, despite it being his most heavily used pitch all night. And though his cutter wasn’t much of a whiff generator, it elicited almost exclusively soft contact and was responsible for seven of Senga’s ten called strikes on the night.

Looking through his matchups, he seems to be using the cutter primarily as a setup weapon off his heater. Thrown close to 10 mph slower than the fastball, Senga’s cutter arrives at the plate on a very similar flight path as his fastball, so the pitch works as much as a timing disruptor as it does a contact limiter. Some clear sequencing patterns are emerging early with Senga (start high in the zone, finish low; live on the arm-side edge of the zone), so he’ll need to make sure he doesn’t get too predictable, but provided the stuff keeps working the way he’s demonstrated in camp and in this first start, it’s a repertoire that should prove difficult for hitters to manage consistently productive contact against.

It’s one start of many, but the confidence Senga showed in his stuff tonight is a direct testament to some of the raves he received earlier this spring. Multiple Mets staff members said he seemed like a different version of himself — a hungrier, healthier, better version.

From the Grapefruit League to the regular season campaign, that’s the version of Senga that’s shown up each time he’s taken the mound. Provided he stays healthy, all available data suggest we should see much more of this over the coming months.

In Senga’s post-game presser, he said that whenever he was on the mound or in the dugout last season, he was constantly worrying about his body and whether it would do what he needed it to do; last night, though, he wasn’t worried about any of that.

“It really felt like I’m a starting pitcher again,” Senga said.

He sure looked the part.

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Around the League 🚩

• The Mariners are reportedly signing No. 7 overall prospect Colt Emerson to an eight-year, $95 million extension (MLB.com)

• Blue Jays RHP Cody Ponce was diagnosed with an ACL sprain; more assessment is needed to determine if there’s an actual tear (MLB.com)

• Pete Alonso hit his first Orioles homer…off of Jacob deGrom (MLB.com)

• Shohei Ohtani allowed just one hit over six shutout innings with six strikeouts in his season debut on the mound

• Phillies RHP Andrew Painter made his long-awaited MLB debut, striking out eight Nationals over 5.1 innings of one-run ball