NEW YORK — When New York Mets right-hander Kodai Senga agreed to be optioned to Triple-A earlier this month to work on his mechanics, the ideal scenario was that he would rejoin the club soon after he was eligible to return on Sept. 20. But that isn’t happening.

Senga told club officials on a call Friday that, despite being healthy, he is not ready to pitch at the major league level after surrendering four runs over 3⅔ innings for Triple-A Syracuse on Thursday. With the minor league season concluding Sunday, the plan instead is to have Senga face hitters in a simulated setting next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said the team is determining where that will take place because Senga is not allowed to be with the major league team while optioned.

Senga’s first start since volunteering for the demotion was encouraging: six innings, three hits, one run and eight strikeouts with no walks. But Thursday’s start represented a significant regression for the reset.

“Stuff-wise, [he] was down,” Mendoza said of Senga’s outing on Thursday. “Whether it was the velo, execution, the secondary pitches were not sharp. So that’s the report that I got. And then, watching film, you could see it. And that’s probably one of the reasons he’s asking for one more time to face hitters, just to kind of continue to work through those issues. So that’s what we saw.”

This isn’t the first time a healthy Senga, 32, has informed the Mets that he is not comfortable pitching in major league games while healthy. Last season, Senga cited mechanical problems multiple times as the reason for delaying his season debut until late July after a shoulder injury had healed. He then strained his left calf in his first start and didn’t pitch in the regular season again.

This year, Senga was one of the best pitchers in the majors until he strained his hamstring on June 12. He landed on the injured list with a 1.47 ERA in 73⅔ innings across 13 starts. The Mets had the best record in the majors. Then he missed nearly a month and returned to toss four scoreless innings on July 11. From there, Senga recorded a 6.56 ERA in 35⅔ innings across eight starts. He pitched into the sixth inning once and completed five innings three times. The Mets, coincidentally, floundered.

With the Mets no longer able to afford short, ineffective starts as they dropped in the standings, they asked Senga to go to Triple-A. All along, he has told the Mets he is healthy. The struggles continue to perplex the team.

“We’re asking the same thing,” Mendoza said when asked why Senga hasn’t returned to his early-season form. “Healthwise, he’s 100 percent fine. There’s no issues with him. He’s not favoring anything. We just haven’t been able to help him, whether it’s mechanicals or execution, whatever the case might be here. But we haven’t gotten there yet. So this is where we’re at. But physically he’s fine.”

Senga’s troubles combined with Sean Manaea‘s ineffectiveness and injuries to other starting pitchers have forced the Mets to thrust three rookies — Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat — into the rotation in the heat of a playoff race.

McLean was called up first to make his major league debut on Aug. 16. Tong followed and then Sproat. McLean has shined in six starts, registering a 1.19 ERA with 40 strikeouts over 37⅔ innings, and is expected to start in the three-game wild-card series should the Mets reach the postseason. Tong’s and Sproat’s roles are less certain.

Senga’s status is even more unclear. Mendoza said Senga could “maybe” be in consideration to return to pitch in the Mets’ season-ending series against the Miami Marlins, but that would require multiple unknown steps. A year ago, the Mets aggressively made room for Senga in the postseason despite him not pitching in more than two months. Senga wound up opening two games and coming out of the bullpen in a third, totaling five innings over the three appearances. This year could be different.

“We gotta get there first,” Mendoza said. “We’re having those conversations, but it’s too early to tell.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Salvador Perez hit a three-run homer in Kansas City’s seven-run first inning and the Royals beat the Toronto Blue Jays 20-1 on Friday night.

The Royals sent 10 batters to the plate against Max Scherzer (5-4), who exited after recording just two outs and allowing seven hits in the shortest noninjury start of his career. It was Scherzer’s shortest outing since facing just one batter while pitching for Washington on June 11, 2021, before leaving with an injury. Also, Scherzer’s seven runs conceded in the first inning are the most allowed in any inning of his career.

According to ESPN Research, Toronto’s 19-run loss ties the largest by a division leader in a September or later regular-season game, joining the previous dubious mark set by the San Diego Padres‘ 20-1 loss to the Colorado Rockies in 2005.

Following a homer by George Springer in the top of the first inning, the Royals quickly tied it in the bottom of the inning on Carter Jensen‘s leadoff double and Bobby Witt Jr.’s RBI single. Witt scored on Vinnie Pasquantino‘s double into the left-field corner to give Kansas City the lead for good.

After a walk to Maikel Garcia — and Toronto pitching coach Pete Walker’s ejection — Perez connected for his 30th home run. Michael Massey‘s two-run homer gave Kansas City a 7-1 lead. Then after Carter Jensen hit a ground-rule double — his second two-bagger of the inning — Scherzer was pulled.

Scherzer said he wasn’t overly concerned.

“We’ll deep dive and figure out what was going on, look at more advanced things,” he said. “But when I went back and looked at the location of some of the pitches, I’m actually OK with it. In that regard, you kind of flush it and move on.”

Blue Jays manager John Schneider called it “a weird outing” from a player who’s likely bound for the Hall of Fame.

“Over the course of his career you don’t see that very often from Max, barring an injury,” Schneider said. “They came out swinging and he kind of just left things in the middle.”

Batting leadoff for the first time, Jensen hit three doubles, including a two-run double in the third to go with his two against Scherzer in the first. Jensen became the first Royals player with multiple doubles in the same inning.

Jac Caglianone hit a three-run homer in the seventh as the Royals had 10 runs and 13 hits in 1⅓ innings against catcher Tyler Heineman. Infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa got the last two outs in the eighth inning.

Pasquantino had four of Kansas City’s franchise-record 27 hits, doubling twice as the Royals collected eight extra-base hits in the first three innings.

Royals starter Michael Lorenzen (6-11) gave up a run and three hits with three walks while striking out four in 7⅔ innings for his first win since July 6.

Schneider doesn’t expect Friday’s outing to change anything about Scherzer’s future in the rotation.

“It’s a weird outing to go two-thirds of an inning and throw a lot of pitches,” he said. “But I don’t think that will affect him going forward. It won’t make his pitch count any lower. Going forward he’ll be on a normal workload and kind of normal pitch count.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES — It ended with a fastball, dotted on the lower edge of the zone to strike out Rafael Devers looking. It was the first out of Friday’s fifth inning and perhaps the final pitch Clayton Kershaw will ever throw at Dodger Stadium.

Kershaw, who announced his retirement at season’s end, dispersed hugs with the infielders upon seeing Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts emerge from the dugout to remove him from his final regular-season home start. Roberts, his manager for the past 10 years, shook Kershaw’s hand, wrapped him in a hug, shared some words, then watched as the eventual Hall of Fame left-hander soaked in a raucous standing ovation from a sold-out crowd.

Kershaw lifted his hat to the fans, hugged his teammates in the dugout, then came out once more for a curtain call.

Kershaw, 37, wasn’t at his best in this matchup against the San Francisco Giants. He walked four, navigated several prolonged at-bats and allowed a couple of runs. But, as he has so often these past few years, he found a way to navigate a game and left his team with a chance to win.

The Dodgers trailed 2-1 when Kershaw departed but went on to a 6-3 victory, clinching their 13th consecutive postseason berth.

“I wouldn’t change it,” Kershaw said. “Perfect night.”

The night began with Kershaw alone on the mound. His teammates stayed back in the dugout briefly, wanting to give Kershaw and Dodgers fans a moment to themselves. Kershaw urged them back onto the field and allowed a leadoff home run to Heliot Ramos on his third pitch of the game. He wound up throwing 23 pitches in the first inning, later working around a walk and an error.

He did something similar in the second, issuing a couple of walks before inducing a couple of infield popups. And in the third, which featured a double by Matt Chapman and a run-scoring single by Wilmer Flores. And the fourth, when he worked around a leadoff hit. But he limited damage.

Kershaw finished the top of the fourth by striking out Willy Adames, ending a nine-pitch at-bat and putting his pitch count at 86. Roberts did not even look at him as he approached the bench, wanting to give Kershaw one last hitter so he could remove him mid-inning. It came in the form of Devers, one of the sport’s most dangerous sluggers. Kershaw retired him on his 91st pitch, resulting in his sixth strikeout — a fitting conclusion to what could be the end of his Dodger Stadium career.

Soon after, Kershaw cheered while Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts delivered back-to-back home runs to give the Dodgers a three-run lead with a four-run fifth.

“It wasn’t his best,” Roberts said, “but like he does, he just finds ways to compete, get outs and put us in a position to win a ballgame.”

Kershaw is scheduled to make one more regular-season start next week. But given the depth and talent in the Dodgers’ rotation, his role on the team’s postseason roster is very much uncertain.

In an 18-year career spent entirely in L.A., Kershaw won three Cy Young Awards and an MVP, has accumulated 222 regular-season victories — 11 shy of Don Sutton for the franchise record — and holds a 2.54 career ERA that stands as the second lowest among those who have thrown at least 1,500 innings in the live ball era. His Friday start was attended by Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, his childhood friend, and several former teammates, including Austin Barnes, Russell Martin, Jimmy Rollins, Trayce Thompson, A.J. Pollock and Andre Ethier.

Ethier was in the starting lineup when Kershaw made his major league debut at Dodger Stadium on May 25, 2008, and wound up with the walk-off hit.

Seventeen years later, he watched what might have been Kershaw’s final Dodger Stadium appearance.