is a Japanese baseball player. He is a left-handed starting pitcher for the Yomiuri Giants.
Sugiuchi was the Eiji Sawamura Award winner in . He has had some of the most international experience of any active Japanese baseball player, pitching in the 2000 Sydney and 2008 Beijing Olympics as well as the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics.
Early life and high school career
Suiguchi was born in Kasuga, and raised in Ōnojō, Fukuoka. He began playing baseball in the fourth grade for the Onojo Little League baseball club while attending Onojo Municipal Elementary School as an outfielder, being converted to first base the following year. He became a pitcher in the sixth grade, leading his team to the Round of 16 in the national tournament as their ace. He led the city's Onojo Guts to the finals of the national junior tournament while at Ōno Municipal Junior High School.
Sugiuchi went on to enroll at Kagoshima Jitsugyo High School, playing in the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament and National High School Baseball Championship (the two most prominent national tournaments in Japan, both held at Koshien Stadium) a total of three times. In the summer of 1998, then-senior Sugiuchi matched up with Sendai Senior High School ace Hiroshi Kisanuki (currently with the Yomiuri Giants), a highly touted draft prospect, in the finals of the Kagoshima Tournament, defeating the school 3–1 and earning a berth in the national championship.
Sugiuchi attracted national attention when he threw a 16-strikeout no-hitter in Kagoshima Jitsugyo's first game of the 80th National High School Baseball Championship against Hachinohe Institute of Technology First High School. His success was short-lived, however, as Kagoshima Jitsugyo matched up with powerhouse Yokohama Senior High School (the East Kanagawa champions) in the second round. Yokohama Senior High's lineup, stocked with star players—the likes of Daisuke Matsuzaka, Taketoshi Gotoh, Masaaki Koike and Yoshio Koyama—teed off on Sugiuchi's curveball, touching him up for six runs in eight innings (Matsuzaka hit a home run).
While it was rumored that several NPB teams were considering picking him in the 1998 NPB amateur draft, Sugiuchi decided against declaring for the draft when his high school coach advised him that he would likely go no higher than the fourth round, instead opting to join an industrial league (a collection of amateur teams, each consisting wholly of employees of the owner corporation) team. He initially received an offer from JR Kyushu (Kyushu Railway Company) but eventually went on to join Mitsubishi Heavy Industries–Nagasaki.
As a player who was born in the 1980 Japanese academic year and participated in the 1998 Summer High School Baseball Championship, Sugiuchi is considered a member of the "Matsuzaka Generation".
Industrial league career
Following an unspectacular first year in the industrial leagues, Sugiuchi and teammate and right-hander Takayuki Goto led Mitsubishi Heavy Industries-Nagasaki to a berth in the Intercity Baseball Tournament in 2000, but the team was knocked out in the quarter-finals against Mitsubishi Motors Kawasaki (currently Mitsubishi Fuso Kawasaki) when Sugiuchi gave up back-to-back home runs, the first a game-tying three-run shot and the second a solo arch.
Nevertheless, Sugiuchi was named to the Japanese national team to play in the upcoming 2000 Sydney Olympics following the tournament (Japan finished fourth).
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries-Nagasaki earned a berth in the Industrial League All-Japan Baseball Championship in 2001. Sugiuchi held Nissan Motors to one run over eight innings in the semi-finals, and his team went on to win their first tournament title.
Suiguchi spent a total of three years in the industrial leagues, pitching despite recurring shoulder issues and working on his fastball velocity until it clocked (his fastball had hovered around in high school). The Fukuoka Daiei Hawks (currently the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks) selected Sugiuchi in the third round of the 2001 NPB amateur draft held that fall, presenting him with the uniform number 47, the same number as former Hawks left-hander Kimiyasu Kudo. (Sugiuchi had idolized Kudo as a child.)