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I have a new appreciation for the shuuto. I've always loved seeing the movement and batters muscle reaction to the pitch, but never took the time to go further. Interesting stuff.
Of Shuutos and Splitfingers
Eurocentrism run amok
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"Grandmaster Nimzovich, I just don't understand your play sometimes." - Eugene A. Znosko-Borovsky, ca. 1920, referring to Nimzovich's odd square-blockade style
"Of course not. Have you ever seen a monkey toying with a watch?" - Aron Nimzovich
"YOWCH." - Dr. D
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=== Neuro-Linguistic MalProgramming, Dept. ===
In L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield 3000, the universe is under the thumb of the Frankenstein-like Psychlos, whose mathematics have granted them the secrets of teleportation, high tech in general and total domination.
The universe desperately fights to unlock the secrets of Pyschlo mathematics, but always fails because the Psychlos have clips embedded in their brains causing them to go, um, psycho whenever a foreign race even begins to discuss numbers with them.
Mr. WBC-san has no clip embedded in his brain; get serious. The clip is embedded only in his forearm tendon, allowing him to throw a Psychlo pitch that breaks armside and down relative to the same pitch thrown in vacuum.
F/X calls this a "splitfinger fastball"; Iwakuma and all non-English-speaking people in the Eastern Hemisphere call it a "shuuto." I don't speak Japanese, but in aikido "shuuto" refers to a knife-hand strike, which is almost exactly the opposite of what a splitfinger pitch is all about.
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Iwakuma does happen to grip his knife-hand strike with fingers wide, but the concept of a forkball is that of ducking under an opponent, of avoiding confrontation with him. The concept of an inshoot is to strike the batter at his rear shikaku, the 45-degree corner at which his body folds into poor balance because it collapses into an awkward area of his footspace.
Stand against a martial arts partner, chest to chest. Deliver an atemi blow to one inch short of his nose, so that he blinks and loosens up. Grab his shoulders and push him 45 degrees to his back corner, pushing down at the same time. As his knee folds, he'll go badly off balance in a "crumpled" effect, unable to gather his collapsed back leg under himself. This basic concept is used in more complicated ikkyo pins in dynamic situations.
There is a "blind spot" in a person's footwork. The shuuto, vs RHB's, creates this same type of crumpled loss of balance, with a collapsed front knee and a two-hopper to 3B. I don't know whether that is actually why the Japanese call it the "shuuto," but it's what my old sensei would have talked about.
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The "shuuto" defines Iwakuma-san's game; he throws it 25% of the time, and like Jamie Moyer and Shaun Marcum, he uses a signature offspeed pitch as the pivot of his attack.
With the PC internet so concerned about Eurocentrism, you'd think it would be more annoyed by this. A definitively Japanese attack is reduced to a hackneyed American cheeseburger simply because it's too much trouble to think on our guest's terms. Talk English, man. You're in America now.
Sometimes I suspect that PC police prefer to use the concept of "Eurocentrism" as a political weapon, as opposed to using it as a paradigm to actually attempt to better understand people from other cultures. I doubt that there is much real interest in understanding and appreciating truly different ways of thinking and living, if the fur'ners are going to vote differently from what the university profs do. I mean that in a really nice way.
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Where would you classify a Shuuto in the F/X system? Why, under XX%, of course. If you're not going to create a "screwball" category, which would at least serve sushi and cheeseburgers under different hot and cold windows.
But that's okay. If people don't want to understand Japanese baseball, there are benefits that accrue to them. Ever seen a monkey toying with a watch?
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If you're still getting loose after a long winter off, here's a 2012 article on Shaun Marcum and Hisashi Iwakuma. The template is, "Right hand starters who pitch off their changeups."
Took people a long, loooooong time to grok Jamie Moyer. MLB batters never did. "The only reason I have a career at all," said Jamie, "Is because major league hitters don't want to have an 87-MPH fastball thrown by them."
Two words. In between.
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