The Mets will add Japan’s Kodai Senga in a 5-year, $75 million deal

When Major League Baseball owners tried to curtail excessive spending by creating a third class of luxury tax, it was immediately dubbed the Cohen tax. Stephen A. Cohen, owner of the Mets, took that as a compliment.

“It’s better than having a bridge named after you,” he said at the time.

Cohen, a billionaire who is baseball’s richest owner, vowed that the tax wouldn’t stop him from spending, and he proved it in the offseason as he followed up his team’s 101-win season by spending big on money. Justin VerlanderAnd the Brandon Nemo And the Edwin Diaz. The spending spree continued Saturday when the Mets reached an agreement with Kodai Senga, the rookie right-hander of Japan’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, on a five-year, $75 million contract.

Senga will enter the No. 3 starter role for the Mets. His contract, which has yet to be finalized but confirmed by a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity, will push the team deeper into Cohen’s tax. Combined with the other tiers of the luxury tax, the Mets are currently expected to add about $80 million to the team’s payroll for 2023, for combined expenses of more than $400 million — by far the largest total of dollars ever spent on an MLB team.

With Senga, 29, the Mets are buying a freeback he’s always wanted a chance to prove himself against MLB batters with his “stealth fork,” his own style of forkball made famous by players like Hall of Famer Jack Morris and Dave Stewart. He completes his signature pitch with a fastball that touched 101.9 mph last season.

In 11 Nippon Professional Baseball seasons with the Hawks, Senga was 87-44 with a 2.59 ERA. In 2022, he was 11-6 with a 1.94 ERA and 156 strikeouts in 144 innings pitched. Like fellow Mets players Verlander and Max Scherzer, Senga has a championship pedigree, being the first player on the Hawks to claim four straight Japan Series titles from 2017 to 2020.

Senga requested to be posted after the 2019 and 2020 seasons, but was denied by the Hawks, the only Nippon Professional Baseball team not to post a player in the current system. Instead, Senga was forced to wait until he reached international free agency, meaning the Mets were not required to pay the Hawks a fee to sign him.

Several clubs were said to be interested in Senga. He is a longtime fan of Yu Darvish, a San Diego Padres player who also started his career in Nippon Professional Baseball. Since Senga and Darvish had trained together in the off-seasons in Japan, there was speculation that the Padres might have the inside track to sign him.

“I love him,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said of Senga at the Winter Meetings in San Diego last week, noting that it’s hard to envision Japanese pitchers for a variety of reasons, like pitching workload increases every fifth day instead of once a week, as they do in Japan. The size of baseball itself is also slightly smaller in Japan.

“A good pitcher is a good pitcher,” Showalter said. “You always think about the burden of pitching every fifth day compared to the other day, but they said that about some really good Japanese pitchers who came here and did really well.

“So he’s a good guy. We got to talk to him. And he’s impressive. You can see why they think so highly of him. I enjoyed our little talk with him.”

Senga threw a no-hitter in 2019 for the Hawks and also pitched in the 2020 Olympics for Japan, working a scoreless sixth inning. Gold medal game Japan also beat the United States 2-0.

Senga’s main concern will be its durability. He was sidelined for most of 2014 with a shoulder injury and has had periodic elbow pain since then. Partly because of that, he has thrown more than 150 innings in a season only twice in 11 seasons. His 144 innings pitched in 2022 was the most he has thrown since 2017.

Showalter likened the routine change from Japan to MLB to that of the “Friday Night Pitcher” in college baseball. “They do shows maybe once a week,” he said. “All of a sudden you’re being told to post every fifth day. Now, they throw 140, 150 pitches at that thing once a week, so can you shorten them at 90 and 100 and have them progress every fifth day? Well, what if I’m wrong? That’s the thing you’re thinking.” in it permanently.”

Any doubts didn’t deter the Mets from continuing their spending spree this month, during which they committed $359 million to five free agents: Senga, Verlander (two years, $86.6 million), Nemo (eight years, $162 million), left-hander Jose Quintana ( 2 years, $26 million) and reliever David Robertson (1 year, $10 million). The Mets also extended Diaz (five years, $102 million) the largest contract ever awarded to a relief pitcher.

Since the off-season has not yet included the addition of an impact bat, the Mets may not be spent.