Senga hopeful for final weekend; Lindor still iffy
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Jorge Castillo, ESPN Staff Writer
NEW YORK — Kodai Senga‘s regular season might not be over quite yet.
The right-hander could rejoin the New York Mets soon for the final weekend of the regular season if he emerges healthy from an abbreviated Triple-A start Saturday, manager Carlos Mendoza said Friday before the Mets’ game against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Senga is scheduled to throw no more than two innings and 35 pitches for Syracuse, according to Mendoza. The earliest Senga would then return to pitch for the Mets is Friday against the Milwaukee Brewers to give him at least the standard four days’ rest between outings.
Senga would either return as a starter limited to 35-40 pitches or as a reliever. Mendoza said his potential role is undecided.
“Hopefully, we’re having those conversations,” said Mendoza, whose team began Friday with a two-game lead for the final National League wild-card playoff spot. “I got to talk to him. We just got to wait and see how he comes out of [Saturday]. And this is a guy that’s got a pretty special routine and he’s very meticulous about everything that he does. So he’s going to have a lot of say in this decision.”
A return next week would be ahead of schedule for Senga, who the Mets initially feared would sit out the rest of the regular season after he suffered a calf strain in his season debut on July 26. Senga suffered the injury running off the mound during an infield popup in the sixth inning of his first start of the season. He had held the Atlanta Braves to two runs and two hits with nine strikeouts in 5⅓ innings. That remains his only appearance for the Mets this season.
Senga was shut down because of a shoulder injury less than a week into spring training. An injury setback and his displeasure with mechanics extended his absence into the season’s second half, leaving the Mets without their projected No. 1 starter for four months.
Senga, 31, was runner-up for NL Rookie of the Year last season after posting a 2.98 ERA with 202 strikeouts in 166⅓ innings across 29 starts. He has never pitched out of the bullpen in the majors but has experience in the role from his time in Japan.
The Mets’ rotation, a flaw before the All-Star break, has become a strength over the course of the season without Senga. Entering Friday, Mets starters have posted a 3.36 ERA in the second half, fifth best in baseball. The group’s 4.23 ERA before the All-Star break was 22nd in the majors.
“I think before we put him in any major league competition, we’re going to make sure that we have confidence that he’s ready to go,” said David Stearns, Mets president of baseball operations. “And, frankly, most importantly, that he has confidence that he’s ready to go.”
Though Senga has a straightforward timeline for his return, Francisco Lindor‘s status is hazier. A lower back injury kept the shortstop out of the lineup for the fifth straight game Friday, though he took batting practice on the field for the first time since leaving Sunday’s game after one inning.
Mendoza said Lindor could theoretically return the day after resuming baseball activities, which opens the door for him to play Saturday against the first-place Phillies. That, however, seems unlikely for Lindor, who was Shohei Ohtani’s strongest competition for NL MVP before being sidelined.
“I think if we were in May maybe we’d give him an extra day, just a couple of days of him running the bases and him going through [workouts],” Mendoza said. “But the thing with him is he knows himself better than anybody. And when he can go, he’s going to let us know.”
The Mets had won four consecutive games without Lindor entering Friday. Would they play it safer with Lindor if they kept winning and created more room in this tight playoff race without him?
“He’s Francisco Lindor,” Mendoza said. “We’re talking about a potential MVP. When he says he’s ready to go, it doesn’t matter where we’re at, he’s in the lineup.”
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani hit two homers in an 11-5 win over the San Francisco Giants on Saturday night, emphatically ending the three-time MVP’s longest homer drought since joining the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ohtani led off the bottom of the first with his 24th homer, hammering Landen Roupp‘s fourth pitch 419 feet deep into the right-field bleachers with an exit velocity of 110.3 mph.
The slugger had been in a 10-game homer drought since June 2, going 10-for-40 in that stretch with no RBIs, although he still had an eight-game hitting streak during his power outage.
Ohtani led off the sixth with his 25th homer, sending Tristan Beck‘s breaking ball outside the strike zone into the bleachers in right. He also moved one homer behind the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Seattle’s Cal Raleigh for the overall major league lead.
Dodgers fans brought him home with a standing ovation as Ohtani produced his third multihomer game of the season and the 22nd of his career.
Ohtani reached base four times and scored three runs in his first four at-bats, drawing two walks to go with his two homers.
Ohtani hadn’t played in 10 straight games without hitting a homer since 2023 in the final 10 games of his six-year tenure with the Los Angeles Angels.
Ohtani had slowed down a bit over the past two weeks after he was named the NL Player of the Month for May with a formidable performance, racking up 15 homers and 28 RBIs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BOSTON — Hunter Dobbins had quite the week.
First, he said last weekend that he would rather retire than pitch for the Yankees because his father was drafted by New York twice before being traded.
Then, he went out and beat the Yankees.
A few days after his comments about never wanting to pitch for New York, he had to defend his dad’s story about being drafted by the Yankees in response to a New York Post article that cited multiple official databases and the Yankees’ own records that couldn’t confirm Lance Dobbins ever played with the organization.
On Saturday night, Dobbins (4-1) followed up by going six shutout innings in Boston’s 4-3 victory over New York, his second win over the Yankees in less than a week.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “I’m more worried about just the win column, whether it’s against them or anybody. My job is to try and help this team win as many ballgames as we can, and pitch in meaningful playoff baseball games. That’s what I’m more focused on.”
But he realizes what it means to the fan base in this longtime rivalry, with the Red Sox fans heard chanting about the Yankees outside the park before he spoke in an interview room.
“Yeah, I love being able to perform and get those wins for the fans here,” he said. “They deserve it. It’s a great city, passionate fan base, so being able to get those wins — especially twice in one week — means a lot and looking forward to trying to build on that going forward.”
In his victory over New York last Sunday, Dobbins held the Yankees to three runs over five innings, two on a first-inning homer by Aaron Judge.
On Saturday night, Judge went 0-for-3 against him, striking out twice on curveballs.
“It was just kind of scouting,” Dobbins said of his game plan against New York’s slugger after Garrett Crochet struck him out three times in the series opener Friday.
“Crochet has an electric fastball. I can throw it hard, but the shape isn’t quite as elite,” he said. “So we knew we had better weapons to go at him with, so I felt like we did a good job of kind of keeping a balanced attack throughout the order.”
Dobbins struck out five and gave up only two singles Saturday.
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