Samurai Japan likely to sweep Nakata from cleanup spot

After four games against Mexico and the Netherlands, Samurai Japan manager Hiroki Kokubo’s experiment with Sho Nakata as a cleanup hitter appears to be over.

Nakata thrived in the No. 6 hole in last year’s Premier 12, when Takeya Nakamura batted fourth, but has been impotent in the No. 4 spot. Nakata had two hits during the four games at Tokyo Dome. His three RBIs resulted from three weakly hit balls: a groundout, a bloop double and a seeing-eye single.

“I was jammed completely, but the ball went in the right direction,” he said of his single a day after saying the same thing about his RBI double, a little pop that fell untouched down the first base line.

Speaking to Kyodo News prior to Sunday’s final game, batting coach Atsunori Inaba said dropping his former Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters teammate down in the order posed no problems because of the presence of Yokohama BayStars slugger Yoshitomo Tsutsugo.

“We know Tsutsugo can hit at this level in the No. 4 spot,” Inaba said. “Manager Kokubo wanted to see if Nakata could give us another option there. Unless I’m mistaken, this will be his last game (at No. 4).”

Kokubo, who never managed before being handed the reins of Samurai Japan following the 2013 WBC debacle, in which a team under long-retired manager Koji Yamamoto scraped into the semifinals where it was beaten by Puerto Rico.

Nakata played left field for that team, but was still 23 and had only just established himself as the Fighters’ cleanup man, and was batting further down in the lineup when Samurai Japan crashed out at San Francisco’s AT&T Park.

When Kokubo selected a young team for a three-game series in Taiwan three years ago, Nakata went 2-for-13 as his cleanup man. In November 2014, it was more of the same against a team of visiting major leaguers.

The only time the Fighters slugger has performed well wearing his country’s name on his shirt came in the Premier 12 and its two preliminaries against Puerto Rico, when he went 13-for-32 with 12 extra bases and seven walks.

Nakata went 0-for-2 with a walk in Sunday’s game against the Netherlands, leaving him 9-for-60 as Samurai Japan cleanup hitter with one double, one homer and four walks.