Specialty
Shuuto
A Japanese name for a pitch that runs and sinks in toward a same-handed hitter, boring in on his hands. Despite the exotic label, players who caught it say it's basically a two-seamer, the arm-side mirror of a cutter.
The grip
Typically a two-seam grip released with a pronated wrist to put arm-side run on the ball — the same family of action a Western pitcher would call a two-seamer or sinker.
What it does
Runs and sinks to the pitcher's arm side, boring in on a same-handed hitter. Bobby Valentine described its action as the opposite of a cutter; Hiroki Kuroda's catcher Russell Martin flatly called it 'just a two-seamer.' That is the core point: despite the exotic name, it lives in the fastball family as the arm-side mirror of the cutter.
What it really is
A Japanese (NPB) pitch name that Western tracking systems generally fold into the two-seam fastball. The label is loose — it can describe almost any arm-side-tailing pitch — which feeds a broader NPB-vocabulary tangle, the same naming murk that surrounds the gyroball, where slider, two-seamer and 'gyro' classifications blur into one another.
Who throws itHiroki Kuroda, Masumi Kuwata, Noboru Akiyama, Yu Darvish
Study this first
Hiroki Kuroda's catcher Russell Martin flatly called it a two-seamer. Despite the exotic name, the filed Two-Seam is the pitch to study: the shuuto lives in that family as the arm-side mirror of a cutter.
Basic file
This pitch has a sourced one-line grip and movement and an honest explanation, not yet a filed specimen with authored grip geometry and a full craft chapter. A fuller breakdown is coming; the source trail stays attached.
Others in the specialty
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