MLB analyst breaks down Mets' Kodai Senga's 'unhittable' pitch

DeRosa, a former major league utility man, had high praise for the entire Mets pitching staff that has been one of the most captivating surprises in all of baseball to start the year. Each starting pitcher is well under a 4.00 ERA and have each picked up a win for the first-place ballclub. But as DeRosa explains, Senga has been the clear front man, posting a 0.79 ERA with 20 strikeouts and three wins in his four starts.

"Kodai Senga has an unhittable pitch," DeRosa stated bluntly. He went on to compare Senga to fellow Japanese-born, former Boston Red Sox closer Koji Uehara in the way that batters expect the splitter and "there is still nothing [they] can do with it."

DeRosa's breakdown included a clip from Athletics' outfielder Brent Rooker on the Pitching Ninja YouTube channel describing the difficulty of facing Senga. According to Rooker, Senga's ghost fork "looks like a fastball for 53 feet, and then the last seven feet it just turbo dives into the dirt."

According to Baseball Savant, Senga throws the forkball 26.7% of the time, making it his second most commonly used pitch behind his four-seam fastball that he's thrown 34.5% of the time.

As Rooker explains, Senga sets his 'ghost fork' up to look identical to his fastball. When batters began expecting the nasty off-speed pitch with two strikes, Senga started to throw a low fastball that freezes a hitter anticipating the pitch to drop out of the zone. This creates an impossible dilemma for hitters where they either have to "[give] him the take fastball" or become "susceptible to the chase splitter."

Behind this pitch, the 32-year-old has bounced back from an injury-plagued 2024 campaign to become a true ace for New York. Senga will be on the bump for his fifth start of the season Friday night, as the Mets take on the Washington Nationals in the first game of another series against an NL East foe.