Toshiya Sugiuchi

Sugiuchi is the pitcher I reach for whenever someone insists a defeat can't be the making of a career. He grew up in Fukuoka but went south to high school in Kagoshima, and at the national summer tournament at Koshien he threw a no-hitter and still lost the game, the sort of result that would send most teenagers looking for another sport. Instead he became one of the best left-handed starters of his generation in Japan, taking the Eiji Sawamura Award, the closest thing the country has to a Cy Young, in 2005. Then he did the difficult thing again and left the Fukuoka club where he had built everything for the Yomiuri Giants. He never pitched like a man who needed the crowd's attention. He is on the coaching side now, and I am curious whether that particular composure can be handed to anyone else.

Name (English)

Toshiya Sugiuchi

Name (Japanese)

杉内俊哉

Born

October 30, 1980 (age 45)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Monkey

Origin

Ōnojō-shi, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

Height

175 cm

Occupation

baseball player / baseball coach

High school

Kagoshima Jitsugyo High School

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%89%E5%86%85%E4%BF%8A%E5%93%89

Tags

• Fukuoka Prefecture
• baseball player
• baseball coach

Last updated

2026-07-27

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.