Shuuto

The shuuto (シュート) or shootball is a baseball pitch. It is commonly thrown by right-handed Japanese pitchers such as Hiroki Kuroda, Noboru Akiyama, Kenjiro Kawasaki, Daisuke Matsuzaka,^[1] Yu Darvish^[2] and Masumi Kuwata.^[3] The most renowned shuuto pitcher in history was Masaji Hiramatsu, whose famous pitch was dubbed the razor shuuto because it seemed to "cut the air" when thrown.

The pitch is mainly designed to break down and in on right-handed batters, to prevent them from making solid contact with the ball. It can be thrown to left-handers to keep them off balance. Good shuuto pitches often break the bats of right-handed hitters because they get jammed when trying to swing at this pitch. It could be said that the shuuto has a somewhat similar break and purpose as the screwball. If the shuuto was thrown off the outside part of the plate, it would tail back over the outside border of the strike zone. Conversely, if it was thrown on the inside part of the plate, it would move even further inside.

The shuuto is often described in English as a reverse slider, but this is not strictly the case. The shuuto generally has more velocity and less break than a slider. The two-seam fastball, the sinker, and the screwball, in differing degrees, move down and in towards a right-handed batter when thrown, or in the opposite manner of a curveball and a slider.

The shuuto is often confused with the gyroball, perhaps because of an article by Will Carroll^[4] that erroneously equated the two pitches. Although Carroll later corrected himself, the confusion persists.

According to baseball analyst Mike Fast, the shuuto "can describe any pitch that tails to the pitcher's arm side, including the two-seam fastball, the circle change-up, the screwball, and the split-finger fastball".^[5]