(Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images)
New York Mets starter Kodai Senga didn’t have a particularly good start on Wednesday.
He fell to the lowly Kansas City Royals and allowed 11 hits, two walks, and three earned runs in 5.2 frames.
However, that doesn’t take anything away from what he has achieved this year.
In 20 starts and 110.2 innings, he has a cool 3.25 ERA and 136 strikeouts.
A big part of his success stems from his excellent “ghost forkball”.
It’s a unique pitch that tumbles right before reaching the plate, generating plenty of swings-and-misses and soft contact.
In fact, according to MLB Stats, it’s one of the most effective offerings in baseball.
The ghost is real.
(MLB x @GoogleCloud) pic.twitter.com/niqsdVj2lk
— MLB Stats (@MLBStats) August 2, 2023
At .137, it has the lowest slugging percentage allowed in MLB, better than Shane McClanahan’s changeup, Blake Snell’s curveball, and Sonny Gray’s sweeper.
Just in case you are confused, that’s not a .137 batting average: it’s slugging percentage, which is even more impressive.
Hitters just can’t figure out Senga’s ghost forkball, and on the rare occasions they make contact, they rarely do any type of damage.
When it comes to missing bats, it’s also an elite pitch.
It has a 58.3 percent whiff rate.
Whiff rates means swings-and-misses per each swing.
In the specific case of Senga, for every 10 swings hitters take against the forkball, they find nothing but wind in just over 5.8 of them.
That’s really, really impressive.
Senga has been one of the few consistently good Mets this year.
He will have the responsibility of carrying the rotation from here to the end of the season and perhaps in 2024 too, now that Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander are gone.
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