Kodai Senga, Sean Manaea had different yet upbeat NY Mets spring training debuts

Sean Manaea and Kodai Senga each hold a pair of keys for a successful or failed New York Mets season in 2026. Manaea started on Friday, allowing a home run as his lone hit in 3 innings. Senga got the ball on Saturday, lasting 2.2 innings and allowing a pair of home runs among the 3 hits he surrendered.

The results were different, favoring Manaea. The velocity on their fastballs varied by about a decade.

Manaea’s velocity down and Senga’s up, there’s two schools of thought: is it “only spring training” for Manaea or does Senga need to “take some off” and focus on staying healthy rather than throwing hard?

You can sound the alarm bells or keep calm and carry on with either pitcher

At the end of the day, this is a results-driven league where it doesn’t matter how hard you throw, but whether or not you get outs. Manaea was more successful than Senga in that regard. Still, it’s nice to see Senga throw with high velocity in his season debut. Until there are actual injuries or concerns of one, throw flames!

The success of the Mets season doesn’t completely hinge on how these two perform. They’ve been shoved down the starting pitching depth chart. A rotation led by Freddy Peralta with Nolan McLean ready to let everyone know he’s the real deal, it’s not an impossibility for Manaea or Senga to lose their job in the rotation very quickly.

The big topic with Senga before and after his debut is his willingness to throw on regular rest. The Mets have been adamant about the extra day of rest for nearly his entire big league career. Senga spoke about how he would be willing to pitch on a normal 4 days between starts in a five-man rotation.

Results do suggest the extra day does Senga good even if it’s a 4-game sample of not having the extra day. A 5.09 ERA in his 4 starts on 4 days of rest versus an identical 2.86 with 5 or 6+ days between starts, we can understand the Mets’ hesitation. They’ve kind of fallen into having a six-man rotation lined up for this year. Even if they were to suffer an injury, Tobias Myers might profile better as a starter than a reliever who can go multiple innings. Save that typical longman role for an inferior arm if you can.

Manaea’s velocity drop is a hint of worse things to come, but no guarantee. His fastball was his leading pitch in 2024 with only a .163 batting average against versus .264 last season. A part of the reason was likely due to fewer pitches in his arsenal. He unleashed 6 regularly in 2024. He relied mostly on his fastball and sweeper in 2025 with a changeup that got hit at a .412 clip as his third-most used pitch. A sinker, which was thrown just 5 times in all of 2025 versus 752 in 2024, was the only other bullet thrown.

We can feel both good and bad about what this pair delivered in outing number one. The real challenge will come when the regular season arrives and they’re asked to go 5+ innings. More than anything else, it was their durability that we’ll continue to question both from game-to-game and from start to finish.