Kodai Senga RHP
Quality innings are one of the rarest, most valuable commodities in Strat. Senga offers 166 of them with a strikeout rate few can match. His combination of volume, platoon neutrality and low hit and total base rates place him comfortably in the top 20 for Strat starting pitchers in the 2023 set.
That is to say: Senga is highly attractive to a contending team in the middle of the first round, even as a 30-year-old. He isn’t at the level of young Japanese aces such as Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka or Shohei Ohtani. But he could have multiple good Strat cards, a la Hisashi Iwakuma, Hiroki Kuroda or Kenta Maeda.
That has tremendous value, because the nature of starting pitching today is such that it takes 10 starter candidates or more to fill out a five-man rotation. So I don’t waste time discriminating based on pitcher age. “They aren’t checking IDs on the mound,” in the words of one famous scout.
Senga is unique for an MLB starter. Not many throw as many splitters and as few breaking pitches as he does, but two who have succeeded using these criteria are Kevin Gausman and Hideo Nomo. The same applies to late-stage Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling, but they are poor comparison points because they had command that was at least two full grades better than Senga.
Postscript: Senga’s spring shoulder injury alters his 2024 outlook, but that won’t affect me in Strat until 2025, when we replay the 2024 MLB season. Would I still draft Senga at No. 16 if I knew the nature of his injury? Maybe. Rotation depth is so important that rostering talented pitchers who intend to continue pitching and have the capability to heal are valuable.
1 comment:
Interesting, Matt. Thanks.
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