Kota Senga, who has joined the Mets, has asked fans for their opinions and he decided on his number, 34, the number Nolan Ryan wore when he joined the Mets. Senga was the ace of the evergreen SoftBank team in Japan, but at the time of joining the team, he was a reliever. In 2017, he won his first title, the highest winning percentage, and in 2020, he won the triple crown of best ERA, most wins, and most strikeouts. He has grown into one of Japan's leading aces. The following table summarizes Japan's results over the past 11 years.
And the second is a projection of Senga's first year in America with the Mets, based on his performance in Japan. In Japan, he was often injured, never pitched more than 200 innings, and his best number of win was 13 win. Also, Senga, whose name is synonymous with a ghost fork, strikes out a lot. This is his first year in the MLB, so he will probably need time to get used to it. However, Senga has always had a strong desire to pitch in the majors, and it is believed that he is preparing accordingly. The Mets have two Cy Young Award winning pitchers in Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, and Senga will be the third to fifth starter. If he can get the above results, it would be a respectable first year of a contract worth a total of $75 million. Japan has some very good pitchers, such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Rōki Sasaki, but Senga's performance this year will be one of the benchmarks for Japanese pitchers in the future. We hope to see him join the ranks of Shohei Otani and Yu Darvish, who are now MLB's leading pitchers.
