Masahiro Tanaka Throws a Strike That Was Possessed by Demons

It's not a "gyroball" that Yankees right-hander Masahiro Tanaka threw to Brock Holt of the Red Sox on Sunday night. It's better, because it's real and not a marketing myth. Tanaka dazzled Holt in the second inning, along with anyone from the audience paying close attention, with a shuuto. Not prosciutto, which also is yummy, but shuuto, which as you can see is also pretty tasty. It's a pitch that a number of pitchers from Japan, including Yu Darvish, reportedly throw. It's hard to imagine any of those others moving any better than this one:

Holy moly.

It's categorized as a two-seam fastball, or a sinker. A shuuto can be any pitch that breaks to the pitcher's arm side. It's like a screwball in that way, but a screwball gets its own category. Two-seam fastballs have been around Major League Baseball for decades, though the Tom Selleck movie Mr. Baseball enhanced the pitch's mythos when it came to U.S.-Japan baseball culture. How does Tanaka do it? Pitching consultant Kyle Boddy explains in a nutshell:

.@cut4 A super-high spin rate (Tanaka has it), proper seam alignment, favorable camera angles, and… https://t.co/EFcNRGKbqL
— Kyle Boddy (@drivelinebases) July 18, 2016

For a long while in North America, the shuuto was confused with the gyroball, a pitch that doesn't exist on a practical level. Gyros (not the sandwich but the pitch) are more bull-shutto than anything else. The shuuto is very real, and quite spectacular, when thrown the right way, although Boddy is correct that the right camera angles certainly enhance the look. And throwing the shuuto is not specific to Japanese players; Boddy has worked with Trevor Bauer of the Indians and others to enhance their repertoires:

This pitch reportedly broke 11.9 in horizontally and 4.8 in vertically. Learn your physics, kids! #laminarexpress pic.twitter.com/AYvIYzLpga
— Kyle Boddy (@drivelinebases) June 3, 2015

Bauer's pitch scored 11.9 and 4.8! Is that a lot? Well, Tanaka's broke 9.1 horizontally and 6.3 in verticality, and the ball had 2,200 RPMs for a spin rate, which is a lot. The key for the success of Tanaka's pitch is the spin angle, the official info for which is available from MLB's Statcast. However, Jeff Long of Baseball Prospectus has an estimate for Tanaka:

@AnswerDave 233 degrees is your spin angle. 2200 rpm total spine, ~90% of it was "useful spin" in good alignment. pic.twitter.com/n4kIJS9rCj
— Jeff Long (@JeffLongBP) July 18, 2016

@AnswerDave The ball wants to go the direction of the spin, so this very flat spin angle is why he got so much R > L movement on that pitch.
— Jeff Long (@JeffLongBP) July 18, 2016

You got it, right? Tell me you got it. We're still working out how to convey the meaning of these numbers concisely, but here are more statistics about Tanaka's pitch to Holt, along with a helpful article that Long wrote at BP about how important spin rates are. If that's not your style, there's no shame in simply enjoying the shuuto as a mind-fuck on a visual level: