The Mets announced after Friday’s loss to the Tampa Bay Rays that starter Kodai Senga is dealing with a low-grade hamstring strain.
Manager Carlos Mendoza described it as “relatively good news” for the right-hander who will be re-evaluated in two weeks.
“It’s a grade 1 hamstring strain,” Mendoza said. “I feel like relatively good news here. It’s a low grade, so we’re looking at probably two weeks, 14 days before we re-evaluate again. Hopefully, he’s symptom-free and we’ll get him back up again. Talking to the trainers, they feel like we got some good news here.”
It’s certainly good news for New York and Senga, who looked to be in serious pain right after sustaining the injury on Thursday afternoon.
However, the timetable for his return to the mound is still unclear.
“It depends on the player,” Mendoza said. “So it’s two weeks of very little physical activity. Hopefully, I gotta get with the trainers, we keep the arm going, but he’s gotta be symptom-free before we start ramping him up, so could be four, five, six [weeks], who knows. But, again, it’s a low grade, which is good news.”
After the Mets went through a laborious rehab process with Senga last season following a calf and a shoulder injury, the team feels confident that they will get through this process without any issues.
“We got some really good trainers and systems in place,” the skipper said. “Now that we went through [that] with Senga, I’m pretty confident that the communication, the feedback — we’ll continue to listen to him. He’s very meticulous about what he does when it comes down to rehab, his mechanics and the throwing program. I feel like we’re in a good place and I’m not anticipating any issues.”
President of baseball operations David Stearns spoke about Senga prior to the diagnosis and also touched on the 32-year-old’s rehab process from a year ago and how it can help this time around.
“Senga, as a lot of players, but particularly Senga, he wants to be involved in the process,” Stearns said. “And I think it’s important that we get on the same page as him from the jump and that we’re all bought into what this process is going to look like. I think we got there last year, but anytime you’re going through this multiple times, I certainly know Senga a lot better now than I did last year.
“Our medical staff has now worked through a rehab progression and a rehab process with him already on multiple occasions, so I think we feel pretty comfortable that whatever this turns out to be, we’re gonna be able to work very productively with him to get him back healthy.”
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