Kenny Serwa throws the weirdest pitch in professional baseball - a knuckleball at 88 miles per hour with almost zero spin. It dances like it’s had three too many and when you first see the video, it’s mesmerizing. Unhittable, right? The kind of thing that breaks baseball? (And it’s a pretty good ad for Tread.)
Well … not quite. Through 42 innings in A and AA ball this season, Serwa has allowed 32 hits, 10 walks, and 6.43 earned runs per nine innings. The strikeout-to-walk ratio is solid — 38/10 — which tells us he’s locating the pitch. He’s not wild. He’s not out of control. He’s getting hit, because there’s a difference between viral and real. (I also, admittedly, do not know how often he’s throwing the pitch, despite my best efforts.)
This is not a Sidd Finch situation. There is no mystery monk. There is no 168 mph fastball. I have bad news about the Tooth Fairy, too.
We live in a time when pitching is more grotesquely advanced than ever. There are sweepers that move a foot, sinkers that look like they hit an invisible trampoline, curves that tunnel off a cliff, and fastballs that touch 104. We measure vertical approach angle and spin efficiency, shape and seam orientation. We can fingerprint pitches, project trajectories, and tell you exactly how hard that ball was hit into the third deck.
Yet when we saw a viral video of a hard knuckleball — something no one else throws — we thought: that’ll do, pig. We thought a pitch that looks like bad CGI would automatically dominate. Because it’s different. Because it’s strange. Because we wanted it to.
Serwa’s story isn’t that simple. The pitch is real. The movement is real. The strikeouts are real. His work to design that pitch is very real. But professional hitters are not YouTube commenters. They adjust. Serwa, for all the movement and all the novelty, is learning that pro baseball doesn’t give out wins for uniqueness.
He’s locating the pitch. He’s not walking the park. But hitters are still putting it in play and hitting it hard. Why? Because it doesn’t matter how strange the pitch is if there’s nothing else to think about. Hitters can sit dead red on that 87 mph flutterball and just react. When they square it up, it goes. That’s not magic. That’s baseball.
The viral story is still worth telling. It got him signed and full credit to the Tigers for having the cojones to sign him. It made him real, but the climb from sideshow to showtime is a long one and hitters don’t care how many YouTube views your pitch got. They care what it does when it’s 3-1 with two men on.
So no, there’s no Sidd Finch. There’s no unhittable pitch. Serwa’s getting outs, but if Single-A hitters can handle it, imagine what Aaron Judge does when he sees it twice. Viral doesn’t equal dominant. Baseball isn’t a highlight reel — it’s a results business. If a pitch can’t beat the best, it doesn’t matter how strange it looks. The knuckleball might be back, but it’s not breaking the game. Not yet.
On to the injuries:
KODAI SENGA, SP NYM (strained hamstring)
There’s no question that Kodai Senga is an ace-level starter. The 73 innings we’ve seen of him is enough sample size. The problem? Injuries from shoulder to calf and now a hamstring have sidelined him for the rest. Aces used to be the 20-game winners, the 300 inning, shutdown anchors of rotations and we simply don’t have those.
There are only five pitchers who have gone 150 innings in each season from 2021 to now - Aaron Nola and Zach Wheeler of the Phillies, Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausmann, and Corbin Burnes. We know the last won’t make it another 150 this season, while Nola is on the edge and unlikely. What’s interesting is that three of the five have moved during that point, once again pushing the narrative that durability isn’t valued. More likely, it is, which is why they were traded; they just started on bad teams.
Also, this is another time when Senga was hurt doing pitcher things besides pitching. He covered first, made an awkward step, and quickly grabbed at his leg. The grab was the tell and yes, hamstring strain it is. A source tells me the expectation is that it’s a significant strain and that he’ll miss more than the minimum. His healing from his calf strain last year was a bit longer than expected, so that could be some guidance. The Mets are planning to do imaging on Friday, but they didn’t wait to push him to the IL.
The Mets have good depth in their rotation, but whoever fills in doesn’t have a ghost fork. Frankie Montas went 76 pitches last time out, so he could be the easy fill in or someone could be called up to give Montas one more rehab start. Sean Manaea is a bit further behind with a plan for three more starts but that could change as well.
Here’s one for Billy Ball or someone with good research skills: what if a pitcher just didn’t cover first? How much would it cost a team over the course of a season if they just said nope, we’re good and let those plays go? My guess is that the play is common enough that it would cost runs over the course of a season, but maybe with certain pitchers, it’s a consideration.
Two more injured young pitchers, a pair of injured older pitchers, and two infielders are below, plus a bunch more in Quick Cuts. Subscribe now and you won’t wonder what’s below this!