Right-hander Kodai Senga and the New York Mets agreed on a five-year, $75 million contract Saturday night, sources familiar with the deal told ESPN, confirming reports, adding the prized pitcher from Japan as part of a free agent spending frenzy that has rocketed the Mets’ payroll past previous records.
Senga, 29, starred over 11 seasons with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of Nippon Professional Baseball, going 104-51 with a 2.42 ERA in 1,340⅔ innings over 275 starts. He’s armed with a fastball that has reached triple digits and a split-fingered fastball nicknamed “the Ghost Fork” for how it disappears before reaching the plate.
He’ll help fill out a rotation bolstered by the free agents signings of American League Cy Young winner Justin Verlander and left-hander Jose Quintana, who will join incumbent ace Max Scherzer and right-hander Carlos Carrasco in one of the National League’s best starting staffs.
The Senga signing, first reported by SNY, encapsulated a madcap week in which the Mets also re-signed center fielder Brandon Nimmo to an eight-year, $162 million contract and brought in right-handed reliever David Robertson on a one-year, $10 million deal. The signings pushed the Mets to uncharted waters for baseball payrolls, where the top have always hovered around the $300 million range.
Currently, the Mets’ competitive-balance-tax payroll — calculated by adding the average annual value of all their deals — is estimated to be around $345 million. If that holds, the Mets would be levied a never-before-seen luxury-tax penalty: $6 million for money spent from $233 million to $253 million; $8.4 million for $253 million to $273 million; $15 million for $273 million to $293 million; and $46.8 million for above $293 million — a 90% tax rate. All told, the Mets are facing a $76.2 million CBT bill — and a total payroll in…
