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.