I recently ran across some very interesting clips of Japanese pitchers that I thought I'd share (so don't run off because this is full of potentially boring text about pitches and pitching -- there are many cool video clips in here).  I'm something of a pitching buff and I find it both interesting and unfortunate that there isn't more innovation in American pitching.  There are more good pitches to be invented and discovered, but it seems like American pitchers are just working on the same old pitches.  I'm not saying that they shouldn't try to perfect the fastball, curveball, slider, etc., but isn't there value in new pitches as well?  Hell, American pitchers are not only not inventing new pitches, they are also forgetting old ones (where have you gone, screwball?).  Well, regardless, the Japanese are hard at work on building the better mousetrap.

via us.i1.yimg.com

Any discussion of interesting Japanese pitches begins with the gyroball.  One of the most interesting things about this pitch is that its very existence is in dispute.  Some say it is merely a myth or legend.  Many others claim to have actually invented the pitch.  Descriptions of what the pitch is, how it moves and how it is thrown are as varied as types of sushimi.  

via graphics.boston.com

The most common description of the gyroball involves it being thrown with an outward, as opposed to inward twist of the wrist (unlike a slider, curve or cut fastball).  This may sound like a screwball, but a screwball is really more a reverse curveball, with the ball being given something close to topspin, making it break down and to the right from a right handed pitcher.  The spin imparted to a gyroball is like that of a football thrown with a perfect spiral (that kind of spin, but counter clockwise from a righty instead of clockwise).  Fastballs have backspin, curveballs have topspin and gyroballs have a lateral spin.  Theoretically, this gives the ball a break to the right from a RHP, like a screwball but different from the screwball in that it doesn't have the same kind of downward break.  in short, while a screwball might have an 11-to-5 break, the gyroball has more of a 9-to-3 break from a RHP.  That's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

via media.collegepublisher.com

Of all of the videos I've seen of pitchers supposedly throwing a gyroball, I think this clip of Tetsuro Kawajiri shows the gyroball best.  The clip shows him striking out Jay Payton and Carlos Delgado in the 2000 Japan-U.S. All-Star Series.  Notice how both Payton and Delgado swing under the pitch because it just doesn't break downward as one would expect it to.  Daisuke Matsuzaka claims that he never intentionally throws the gyroball in games, but occasionally accidentally throws one as a mistake and sometimes throws them in workouts.  This clip supposedly shows him throwing on in a Japanese league game, but it doesn't look at all like a gyroball or anything particularly special or interesting to me.

One of the most recent Japanese pitch inventions is Satoru Komiyama's pitch which he calls the "shake."  It appears to be a knuckleball-like pitch which is thrown with something resembling a forkball grip.  In this clip, you can see the easy, Wakefield-like arm motion and that the pitch is thrown from 87-92 kph (54-57 mph).  And it appears that he, like extreme knuckleballers like Wakefield, throw the pitch almost exclusively.  It has wild, unpredictable movement like the knuckleball and appears almost to be in slow motion.

An older Japanese pitch invention is the shuuto.  It is a high velocity breaking ball with a break opposite to that of a slider.  Like the screwball, it breaks down and in to a righty batter from a RHP.  Because of this, it is often confused with the screwball and gyroball.  It is sometimes referred to as a "reverse slider."  The way I see it, the screwball is the opposite of a curveball.  They both are much slower than a fastball with a lot of break.  The difference is the directions in which they break, which is caused by the spin given the ball at release.  You can think of a shuuto as the opposite of a slider.  They are both high velocity pitches (though not as fast as a fastball) but they break in opposite directions.  In this clip, you can see a montage of Japanese shuuto's.

On Youtube, you will find many clips of Japanese pitchers making pitched balls do all kinds of crazy, impressive things.  There are at least three reasons for this:

1. They have some very good pitchers.

2. Japanese pitching focuses more on movement and change of speeds than blowing hitters away with maximum velocity.

3. The ball used in Japanese baseball is smaller with seams that are raised off the surface of the ball higher.  This helps the pitchers grip and spin the ball better, and for aerodynamic reasons, the higher seams help the ball move more.

Some examples of crazy impressive ball movement can be seen these clips of Masaki Hayashi's incredible looping slider, Shinji Imanaka's slow curve, and Chihiro Kaneko's harder curveball.