MIAMI — At 2 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, Kodai Senga threw the first pitch of his major league career. It was a 99-mile-per-hour fastball that dropped out of the strike zone. What would unfold over the next several innings of the Mets’ 5-1 win over the Miami Marlins exemplified both the adjustment period Senga faces in Major League Baseball and his tantalizing potential.
As they worked to rebuild their starting pitching rotation over the winter, the Mets committed $188 million to three pitchers: the three-time Cy Young Award-winner Justin Verlander, the veteran left-hander José Quintana and Senga, who had spent the previous 11 seasons with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.