The Nakata Show? (pun very much intended)

Well, he hit some 80 home runs in his high school life, and is considered to be the next "monster" coming into the league, more comparable to Kiyohara than Matsui I suppose.

His every move was followed closely by the media, and you see more news about him than anyone else - even when he's just on the bench dodging foul-hit balls.

But he's been doing very poorly as of late, going 0-for-his last 16 at bats, also striking out at an immense rate. He's been dropped from the clean up spot down to the 5th spot - then to the 8th - and in the last two open-sen game, he's came in as a pinch hitter.

His defense is also horrible, and he does not run fast. From what I've seen from the news, he's now confirmed to start in 2-gun at the start of the season.

Same for the other big name high school draft, Yoshinori Satoh (Yakult). After a good first debut, he's been pounced around the last two outings, and will now be starting at 2-gun.

I hope they don't break Nakata, because there was this one special on the big 3 HS rookies and they expected him to try and hit 30 homers. He stated his goal was to hit at least 10 homers, then they pressured him to raise that since Kiyohara hit over 30 in his rookie year. He then said he'd try to hit 20.

The difference here is that Nakata is going to be playing a lot of his games at Sapporo Dome, then he's going to be going on the road and playing in newer ballparks with bigger dimensions and higher walls than Kiyohara played in when he was a rookie. It's just foolish to expect a kid coming straight out of HS to hit 20-30 homers. I don't think that would say much about the level of play in NPB, either.