NEW YORK — It was another crucial moment in a game full of them for Kodai Senga. The Pirates had a runner on third, again. And after Senga fell behind Bryan Reynolds with a first-pitch fastball, he leaned on his trademark forkball as much as ever.
One forkball to fall behind 2-0. A second for a swinging strike, a third for another swing-and-miss. A fourth for a foul ball, a fifth to push the count full. And finally, a sixth straight forkball to finally get Reynolds to fly innocently to right to end the inning and the threat.
Senga had never relied as much on his forkball as he did in the New York Mets’ 2-1 win over Pittsburgh on Tuesday night. He threw it a career-high 40 times, generating a dozen swinging strikes. When the Pirates put men in scoring position, especially on third, which they did inning after inning, Senga hunted strikeouts, and he did it with his ghost fork.
But the six consecutive forkballs he threw to Reynolds were a byproduct of another adaptation from Senga.
“I’m looking at the response of the hitter and what type of hitter they are,” he said through interpreter Hiro Fujiwara. “If they’re somebody who excels at hitting that type of pitch, I wouldn’t be throwing it that many times in a row.”
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— New York Mets (@Mets) May 14, 2025
Over the past two seasons, how has Reynolds fared against splitters and forkballs from right-handers? A .130 batting average, a .174 slugging percentage and a swing-and-miss rate of nearly 20 percent.
“He does his homework,” catcher Francisco Alvarez said of Senga. “He’s always very prepared.”
This is not how Senga would have gone about the at-bat in Japan. It was not even how he would have gone about the at-bat in the first half of his breakout rookie season in the majors in 2023. But learning how to distill and incorporate all the information available to him in the United States has been critical to Senga’s success.
“The big part was not drowning myself in all the data,” he said of 2023. “There was so much, and once I started looking at it, I could go for hours and hours and days and days. I could lose sleep; that actually happened.”
That was distinctly different from Senga’s experience in Japan.
“In Japan, I had never even touched the data. I never really needed it and never really was interested in it,” Senga said. “I just left it up to the catcher. My catcher is going to tell me where to throw it, and I give him the best quality pitch I can throw where he wants it.
“Upon coming to the big leagues, sometimes I can throw a really good pitch, and they’re still going to hit it. When you think about why that happens, you look at the pitch before or the at-bat before or a game before in the past week. You have to look at what a hitter’s thinking, what he’s looking for, and how he’s performed recently. I can take a really deep dive and try to understand each hitter. That’s the big difference.”
Senga said it took until the latter stages of 2023 to find the right balance in absorbing the information at his fingertips without getting lost in it.
“I was able to sort out what I can and can’t remember on the mound,” he said. “So I was able to simplify what I need to know and to look into so I can perform out on the mound. What data I need changes from day to day, so I need to continue to filter through that and make the most out of it.”
“We gave him the resources and showed him where everything was and how to find answers to the questions that he could work through,” pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said. “We let him do his own thing and let him paint the picture. It worked really well.”
That preparation helped Senga continue his excellent start to 2025 on Tuesday. The lone run he allowed came after he exited the game with two outs in the sixth, pushing his ERA up to 1.22.
On Tuesday and throughout the season, Senga has been at his best in the most important moments, like the confrontation with Reynolds. The Pirates had a runner on third with one out in the second, runners on second and third with one out in the third, and runners at the corners with no outs in the fourth. They did not score in any of those innings.
Pittsburgh went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position against Senga; opponents are 4-for-40 in those spots against him this season.
Maybe more impressively, the Pirates couldn’t get a runner home from third with fewer than two outs in four tries Tuesday. Senga has faced that situation 12 times this season, and he’s yet to allow a run. (Major-league teams score the run in that situation 49.6 percent of the time.)
“The forkball today was pretty unbelievable,” manager Carlos Mendoza said, adding that Senga opened the door for forkballs by establishing his fastball in the zone early in the game.
The first time through the order, Senga threw his forkball a quarter of the time; the rest of the night, he threw it a shade under half the time.
Senga has been blunt in his self-assessment, despite his sparkling ERA.
“I did feel a little bit better today,” he said, “compared to previous games.”
Knowing the right amount of homework to do helps.
“I have to keep updating myself because the data updates itself,” he said. “I hope to continue to evolve throughout the year.”
(Top photo of Kodai Senga: Al Bello / Getty Images)