Mariners starter Logan Gilbert thinks Kodai Senga's ghost fork is 'one of the best pitches in the league'
Kodai Senga of the Mets reacts after the seventh inning against the Mariners at Citi Field on Friday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
There were so few guarantees when the Mets signed Kodai Senga this past offseason.
For all the analytics and the video and the scouting, when a pitcher comes from Japan — a country where the balls, the workload and the competition are different — there are going to be questions about how that talent will translate to American soil.
But Logan Gilbert had a pretty good idea.
The Mariners pitcher, who faced off against Senga in the Mets’ 2-1 win Friday, happily considers himself a baseball nerd. When he studied Japanese League games, he saw something he wanted: a forkball. Specifically, the Senga ghost fork — or a pitch close to it.
“It’s one of the best pitches in the league,” he said Saturday. “I tried to look at his grip. I basically split my fingers and throw it like a fastball — just keep it pretty simple, but the grip is kind of similar to his . . . I try to see how he uses it. He has a little more velo separation and a little more drop on it — probably the most drop for a splitter or a forkball or whatever. But he gets a ton of swing and miss. I think it looks so much like a fastball that it’s hard for hitters to lay off it.”
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then imitation at baseball’s highest level is nothing short of a love letter. Gilbert, who is 12-5 with a 3.56 ERA, went from never throwing a splitter in his major-league career to throwing it 14.3% of the time this season, with good success.
It’s his two-strike pitch, and early in the process, it was his leap of faith: Because forkballs — or splitters — have such a low spin rate, inconsistent mechanics translate to unpredictable movement, which can easily spell disaster.
But when done right — and Senga has done it right — they’re devastating.
Senga throws his ghost fork 23.6% of the time, with a .602 whiff percentage. His cutter actually is a more effective pitch — a 16 run value compared to the splitter’s 10 run value, according to Baseball Savant — but the forkball is the thing that makes opposing batters gasp.
“That forkball had way more movement than what I expected it to,” the Mariners’ J.P. Crawford told reporters Friday. “That thing just dropped out the window. It was really impressive. He had everything working.”
But Gilbert’s new pitch also is just a further indication of what’s become obvious: Senga has long since erased any doubt about his viability as a major-league pitcher and has showcased ace potential this year — even if the Mets reload their rotation in free agency.
His 3.08 ERA is third among qualified National League starters. He has 11.09 strikeouts per nine innings, which is fourth, and has allowed 0.82 home runs per nine innings, also fourth.
He also might just be getting started: Senga went from pitching every week in Japan to every five days. He adapted to a less tacky baseball and a smaller strike zone. He and his primary catcher, Francisco Alvarez, don’t even speak the same language.
Plenty of people thought the ghost fork was a gimmick, but he proved he could succeed even when he didn’t have the feel for it.
“He’s not the type of guy that, ‘OK, I’ve seen him, I know how to approach him,’ ” Buck Showalter said. “He’s got a lot of weapons.”
And that, apparently, is an asset no matter what side of the world you’re on. Billy Eppler saw it. Gilbert saw it. Now the rest of MLB is seeing it.
“It’s kind of sink or swim out there,” Gilbert said. “At some point, you’ve just got to throw it and trust in it.”
It’s true of the forkball, and, here in Flushing, it’s true of the man who throws it.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
