How the Nats busted Senga's "ghost forkball"

NEW YORK – The talk around the Big Apple the past two nights when it comes to baseball has been about the Nationals’ young starting pitchers. And rightfully so.

Josiah Gray (nine strikeouts over six shutout innings on Tuesday) and MacKenzie Gore (matching a career-high 10 strikeouts over six innings of one-run ball on Wednesday) have dominated recent headlines like they dominated the Mets lineup over the last two nights.

But lost in the pitching hysteria last night was how the Nats’ own lineup handled one of the more difficult pitches to face in the sport.

Kodai Senga, the 30-year-old right-hander the Mets signed to a five-year, $75 million deal over the offseason out of Japan, is known for throwing a “ghost forkball.” It’s not officially called that by any metric. If you look at his Statcast page, it’s just a forkball.

But it got its name from the way it comes at hitters like a fastball and just seems to disappear right before crossing the plate. Coming into last night’s start, the pitch had a 54 percent whiff rate and a 30 percent putaway rate. Opponents had managed just three hits in 25 at-bats ending with the forkball for a .120 average.

“It's tough to see,” Nationals manager Davey Martinez said before last night’s game. “I watched it on video this morning and it looks like a fastball when it comes in and just drops. So it's tough. Like I said, for our hitters, we're gonna have to try to get the ball up a little bit.”

Having only faced him once for three innings in a spring training game, the Nats had to do some digging to bust this ghost ahead of the game.

“We pulled up some older stuff, too,” Martinez said of researching Segna’s 11 season in Japan’s NPB league. “So we know what his fastball does, we know what the split changeup or whatever he wants to call it does. And like I said, it's good. It's hard to pick up because he throws it hard, he throws it up and by the time you swing, it's nada. So we just got to work counts. We gotta try to get him to fall behind and see if we can get a fastball. But he mixes his pitches up really well.”

Senga threw his forkball 20 times out of his 94 pitches last night for a 21 percent rate. It averaged 83 mph while topping out at 85 mph. And for the most part, the Nationals were able to lay off it.

The Nats’ bats only swung at six of the 20 forkballs offered to them, whiffing three times, having one called for a strike, hitting two foul and putting one in play.

The one put in play was 82 mph and got Joey Meneses to tap it back up the first base line in the first inning. The called strike was to Keibert Ruiz in the second inning, but on replay it actually looked like it was out of the zone and a good take by the young catcher.

It helped that Senga didn’t seem to have his full command of the pitch, which is a scary thought for the hitter, catcher and umpire (BOO!) since it has been said that only he really knows where it’s going when he throws it.

Ruiz actually saw three forkballs in his second-inning plate appearance that resulted in a seven-pitch walk. He was able to lay off the other two that were way out of the zone. He only saw one in his next at-bat that dipped below the zone and he was able to foul off.

“It's a good pitch,” Ruiz said of the forkball, not knowing it was nicknamed “ghost” and having that explained to him. “He threw me one the second AB, 2-1. I saw it like a fastball and swung, but I think we did a very good job with it.”

Coming into the game, Senga’s forkball accounted for 17 of his 25 strikeouts through his first three starts. It only accounted for three of his seven strikeouts last night, the other four coming via his sweeper and cutter.

On the flip side, the Nationals were able to collect five hits and four walks (two on forkballs) to score two runs against Senga and hand him his first major league loss. Their research and patient approach paid off.

“We've been working really hard on getting these guys to understand what balls they really hit well, getting the balls in the strike zone," Martinez said. "Senga's got great stuff. And we saw it. I mean, he struck out some guys. But the key was to be patient and get him in the zone. And when we did that, we got some key hits and that's what we got to continue to do. We got to be patient, we got to take our walks, we got to put the ball in play.”