“He was really good, by the way,” New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said of Kodai Senga after Game 1 of the National League Division Series. “Other than the pitch where (Kyle) Schwarber got him deep, he was really good.”

Two innings, three strikeouts, two base runners, one run – those are good results. But as the NLDS approaches a winner-takes-all game between the Mets and Philadelphia Phillies, the strain on Senga’s team is only increasing. If there is a Game 5, he is the starter. How deep can he pitch? How good will his stuff be?

From a predictive perspective, you would never assume that two innings of good results is anything in particular. And to be fair to Mendoza, he didn’t either.

“The fact that we got 97 (mph) out of him,” Mendoza continued, “and then just the secondary pitches. His split was really good, the slider was good.”

Mendoza also emphasized that he looks at pitch movement and speed and is quite right to focus on those process statistics. Thirty-one pitches may is enough to give us an insight into Senga’s feelings. That’s just enough of an example to provide information about aspects like speed, movement and spin – things pitchers do well at repeating once they’ve established a baseline. Even a single start tells us a lot about a pitcher returning from injury – 68 percent of all starts returning from the injured list are within 0.8 mph of the starter’s fastball velocity in his first start back .

So that’s the bad news for Senga. In his first start back from calf and triceps problems, he posted the third-worst fastball velocity of his career. At least it had good handling (vertical movement), but speed-wise it wasn’t a good game. And as you can see from the whiff rates (the colors on the dots), he generally gets a lot more whiffs when he throws harder – a global trend that continues to hold true for Senga in particular.

On the fastball, the velocity wasn’t good, but the movement was fine. He didn’t get a whiff on the field, but maybe he can at least turn up the radar gun a bit in his next start. There was some evidence to the contrary at the other pitches.

The cutter was a big pitch for Senga in his breakthrough rookie season because it gave him the opportunity to utilize both his slider and his fastball and throw in counts where he needed a strike and couldn’t necessarily go to the forkball. Generally, you want a cutter to cut – on the glove side. The cutters Senga threw in Game 1 on Saturday had nearly three inches more arm side movement than in any other game of his MLB career. This made them look like four-seaters with no lift, and it also affected his command of the pitch – you can see how it fades to Bryce Harper on the arm side in this pitch, rather than going the other way.

Senga may have been lucky that no one was swinging at their cutters last time out, but he was also aware that the pitch wasn’t there for him. He only used it twice.

The breaking balls were roughly normal, at least in terms of movement. The sweeper swept, the slider fell, and it was within the range of his moves demonstrated thus far for the Mets. The only concern might come from the fact that his slider averaged 83.5 mph, up from 84.6 mph in his career, and 85 mph is currently considered some sort of “magic number” for sliders. Speed ​​apply. At the end of the day, this is still related to the lack of fastball velocity and can probably still be filed in the same worry box.

The best news is that the vaunted Ghost Fork was no different from the usual. His split-finger changeup had a little more movement on the arm side — which might make it a little less effective against righties — but the Phillies (including right-handers JT Realmuto and Trea Turner) failed on every single forkball they saw in Game 1.

In summary, Senga lacked a significant amount of speed, as well as the feel and feel of his cutter. Considering he hasn’t even had a rehab stint yet, it’s possible he doesn’t fit the normal distribution of pitchers returning from injury and will gain more than previous pitchers after their first starting back. A steady progression since his first outing could get Senga to 60 pitches and perhaps four innings.

“I’m ready for anything,” he said before his first start. “If they say 10 pitches, I’m all in with 10 pitches. If they say 200, I’m in for 200.”

But for Senga to get further into the game than just three or four innings, he’ll need to at least iron out that cutter, if not regain some gas. If things don’t go his way, he could be in trouble, especially against lefties. Imagine throwing a cutter inside to a lefty and then seeing it move to the arm side or directly into the middle of the zone. And it’s a pitch he’s used 28 percent of the time against lefties throughout his career – it’s important.

Senga has the Ghost Fork in his hand. The radar gun and the movement of his cutter tell us how far he can advance in Game 5 – if it comes to that.

(Photo: Heather Barry/Getty Images)