What is Kodai Senga's 'ghost fork?' Inside the Mets newcomer's pitch that baffled Marlins in MLB debut

Kevin Skiver

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What is Kodai Senga's 'ghost fork?' Inside the Mets newcomer's pitch that baffled Marlins in MLB debut image

Mariano Rivera's cutter. Trevor Hoffman's changeup. More recently Jhoan Duran's splinker. Kodai Senga's ghost fork?

The new Mets pitcher, acquired from the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks on a $75 million deal this offseason, dazzled in his MLB debut Sunday against the Marlins. Senga went 5 1/3 innings with three hits allowed, a run, and three walks, all of which were accompanied by eight strikeouts.

All eight Ks were Marlins batters swinging at the ghost fork.

“He has really good stuff. He’s throwing in the upper 90s and he’s tough to pattern,” said the Marlins' Joey Wendle, who was 0-2 against Senga with a lineout and a flyout, per The New York Post. “He has a lot of pitches, and a lot of stuff going in different directions.”

The ghost fork in particular seems to have little rhyme or reason to its movement, and only Senga appears to know where it's going. The way it drops off the table compared to a fastball, it looks like the pitch hits a wall.

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What is Kodai Senga's 'ghost fork?'

The hilarious thing about Senga's ghost fork is that no one seems to know exactly how to classify it.

In a sport that loves order, the pitch is chaos. Baseball Savant doesn't quantify its spin on the forkball section of the page. It doesn't show its break under Senga's pitch breakdown. How do you even quantify a pitch with this kind of variance?

The simple answer is that Senga's ghost fork is a forkball that stays looking like a fastball before it reaches the point of no return for a batter, at which point it floats. It might float into the lower part of the zone, it might float into the dirt. But the name comes from the disappearing act it does as it nears home plate.

It just vanishes.

Mets manager Buck Showalter refuses to acknowledge the ghost moniker, but Jacob Stallings and some of the other Marlins were believers by the end of Senga's outing.

“It’s tough to pick up,” Stallings said, per The New York Post. “He struck me out on a splitter, whatever you want to call it.”

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The pitch map for Senga is very fun.

Even when Senga was elevating his sweeper, he had total control over the ghost fork. It never got elevated, it always stayed at the belt or lower. That control is a testament to his comfort.

To further illustrate, the heatmap is something to behold.

Senga threw the pitch 26 times, drew 14 swings, and nine whiffs for a whiff rate of 64 percent. All around nasty work.

Kodai Senga's ghost fork glove

Senga knows himself. He has a custom-made glove that immediately skyrocketed to top two in MLB, and it isn't two.

This is his brand, and he lived up to it well. Senga struggled out of the gate. He gave up a double, a single, and a pair of walks through four batters. From there, just two Marlins reached in the rest of his outing.

In NPB, Senga had a career ERA of 2.59 with 1,252 strikeouts in 11 seasons. He was a three-time NPB All-Star and won the NPB Triple Crown in 2020 (most wins, most strikeouts, lowest ERA). Senga attempted to get posted after 2019, but the Hawks held onto him at the time.

Senga had a few other fun moments in his MLB debut, in which he thanked Starling Marte for getting him out of a hairy first and thanked his infield for turning a (routine) double play.

He also had an incredible reaction to Avisail Garcia striking out because of the pitch timer.

The Mets think they have something in Senga, and he did nothing to dispel that notion in his debut. Senga's next start is slated to be Saturday in his home debut against the same lineup he vexed Sunday. We'll see if he's able to keep the show going at Citi Field.

Kevin Skiver

Kevin Skiver Photo

Kevin Skiver has been a content producer at Sporting News since 2021. He previously worked at CBS Sports as a trending topics writer, and now writes various pieces on MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and college sports. He enjoys hiking and eating, not necessarily in that order.