Gyro-Cutter

» 24 July 2010 » In mlb prospects, npb »

I normally don’t pay much attention to the All-Star Game, but this caught my attention.

Yu Darvish unveiled a new pitch called the “gyro-cutter” in his All-Star appearance this year. According to the linked article, he had just shown it in practice on the 21st. Said Darvish: “it’s the first time I used it in a game. It’s one type of cut fastball. Just the trajectory is different from what we’ve had until now.”

Here’s a YouTube clip I found of Darvish throwing the pitch against Giants catcher Shinnosuke Abe. The pitches shown in this video are numbers 13-22 of Darvish’s appearance, if you’d like to check out his velocity chart for the game. The pitches show up at cut fastballs in the data I collected.

Abe had this to say about the at-bat, which resulted in an RBI double: “it’s like a rising pitch from a submariner. I tried with all my might to outlast it with foul balls.”

So what’s “gyro” about this cut fastball? The spin. The Gyroball is supposed to spin sideways toward the plate, rather than rotating top over bottom. I think the best example of the pitch’s grip and trajectory can be seen at about 0:40 of the video. I own a copy of Gyroball originator Kazushi Tezuka’s book, but I haven’t read it, so take what I’m saying here with an appropriate measure of salt. In any event, Abe had a good at-bat and looked capable of fighting the pitch off.

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  1. Patrick
    passerby
    24/07/2010 at 4:58 am Permalink

    CNN Hong Kong reporting in…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKBYJoaJ0OU

  2. Patrick
    Kyle
    24/07/2010 at 7:57 am Permalink

    It seems like it is pretty much just a cutter. I take every “new” pitch in the NPB with a grain of salt.

  3. Patrick
    Patrick
    24/07/2010 at 8:21 am Permalink

    Salt certainly goes well with this news.

    But this is interesting — according to the data I’ve collected, the cutter is Darvish’s least-used breaking pitch this season:

    pitch_en count(pl.pitch_type_id)
    fastball 820
    curve 157
    slider 533
    changeup 152
    cut fastball 110
    shuuto 290
    forkball 129

    This data includes his All-Star appearance.

  4. Patrick
    Patrick
    24/07/2010 at 8:47 pm Permalink

    Here’s the Jeff Passan’s gyroball article: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-mlb_07_gyroball022107 I was looking for this when I wrote this post last night.

  5. Patrick
    kerker
    25/07/2010 at 12:31 am Permalink

    In Japan, they say the image of gyroball is a pitch with slider-like movement but still has near velocity of fastball. Maybe it can be considered as a “great cutter”?

  6. Patrick
    kerker
    25/07/2010 at 12:38 am Permalink

    Matsuzaka also has a excellent cutter in his repertoire. Maybe some of his cutters ever had that huge movement like a slider. So some people say that is a gyroball.