Career
He plays outfield and first base. Early Baseball As a high school student, he played as a pitcher for Osaka Toin High School and his fastball was clocket at 94 mph. Nakata was a highly hyped prospect out of high school, hitting a total of 87 home runs, a Japanese record.
On November 3, 2006, during a prefectural tournament game, the 17-year-old cracked a 550" homer out of the park then over a couple houses before landing across the street.
That shattered the old record for the park, 425" by future NPB regular Osamu Hamanaka. The Minnesota Twins, New York Mets and Seattle Mariners all expressed interest, with Seattle offering $2.5 million.
Nakata turned all of them down to play in Nippon Pro Baseball. He was in the first pick by Hokkaido in the 2007 draft (High School Players).
He succeeds the number 6, previously belongs to "Mr.
Fighters" Yukio Tanaka. 2008
He struggled in his first spring training, and was sent down to ni-gun for seasoning. He fared well, hitting.255/.339/.464 with 11 Human Resources in 196 Bachelor of Arts. He was five homers behind Eastern League leader Yohei Kaneko despite missing the last two months after knee surgery.
2009
Nakata starred in the minors, tying the Eastern League Reserve Bank of India record (95, previously set by Corey Paul) and setting a new homer record (30, also held by Paul).
He made it into 22 official games, debuting on May 23 and singling off Ricky Barrett in his first at-bat in Nippon Pro Baseball. He was 10 for 36 with two doubles, three runs, one Reserve Bank of India, one walk and 15 whiffs for Nippon Ham.
2010
Nakata was moved to the outfield in 2010, but once again missed two months due to knee surgery. He hit.233/.291/.395 with 9 Human Resources but 61 strikeouts in 210 at-bats.
His first NPB homer came off Yuta Omine on July 20.
He also trailed Keisuke Katto, Masahiko Morifuku and Takashi Ogino. 2011
As a regular in 2011, Nakata hit.237/.283/.408 with 32 doubles, 18 home runs and 91 Reserve Bank of India. In a low-offense season, he ranked among the Pacific League leaders in many departments. He was third in Reserve Bank of India (behind Takeya Nakamura and Hiroyuki Nakajima), second in doubles (to Kazuo Matsui), tied for third in homers (with Aarom Baldiris, trailing Nakamura by 30 and Nobuhiro Matsuda by 7), tied for 5th in total bases (215, even with Mitsutaka Gotoh), second in sacrifice flies (8, behind Nakajima), third in strikeouts (133, one behind co-leaders Chung-Shou Yang and Nakamura), tied for 6th in double play grounders (12, even with Baldiris) and 9th in slugging (between Goto and Atsunori Inaba).
He is the first Fighters player to hit at least 20 homers over three consecutive seasons since Michihiro Ogasawara (now with the Chunichi Dragons).
Together with rookie pitcher Shohei Ohtani, the duo are dubbed as the "O-North tandem of the Heisei Era", referencing to the Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima"s "O-North cannon" back in their prime with the Yomiuri Giants
In 2013, he played for Japanese national baseball team in 2013 WBC.