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The story
News that CBC Television is putting together a behind-the-scenes special on Chunichi Dragons player Kō Nao sparked a discussion on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board about what’s next for him. Drafted No. 1 in 2018 out of Osaka Toin High School, Nao has bounced between shortstop, pitcher, and outfield and is now entering his eighth season without ever locking down a position. The thread was full of anxious takes on how the team is using him, the front office’s attitude toward him, and what might happen to him going forward.
What people said
He's already so soaked in Chunichi-style baseball that no other team would touch him
Kind of depends who else from Chunichi ends up on that list. Every team has to have at least one guy taken in the active-player draft anyway
If it were AHRA he might've had a shot
Dunno if it's a literal ban, but Chunichi hasn't drafted a single Osaka Toin player since Nao — probably not even the college guys from there. (Nakata Shō did sign with them, though.)
Couldn't he still handle late-inning substitute duty at this point? If he doubled up as mop-up reliever and backup outfielder, could they squeeze him onto the active roster?
They're in last place anyway, so who cares
His contribution is on a level where they could keep feeding him for life even without him ever breaking out, and it'd still be worth it
He's actually from the Hida region but went to high school in Osaka — did people over in Mino really think of him as "their guy from Gifu" too? (Hida and Mino are the two halves of Gifu Prefecture)
But there's Okabayashi, who's younger and beats him across the board in running, hitting, and fielding, so who knows
The outfield plan was dead the moment Okabayashi showed up. Shortstop was already dead once Tsuchida arrived too — he genuinely had nowhere left to play
He's got an arm, but he's not especially fast. If that's the profile, you'd rather draft an athletic college outfielder and bet on him breaking out instead
An occasional middle reliever might honestly be the right call…
If anything he wasn't really the raw-talent type to begin with — he's not the kind of guy with dream-level power or speed
Yeah, true, he wasn't really a raw-talent case either. It is a mystery why four teams competed for him
The fact that he batted cleanup and played shortstop/pitcher for a Koshien championship team probably carried a lot of weight — that sense of "he'll turn into something somewhere"
Pitching line:
30 G, 3-3, 3.50 ERA
Batting line:
.240, 5 HR, 30 RBI, 5 SB
Something like that
LMAO what a garbage two-way player
https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/column/detail/2025052300002-spnavi
I get that this was part of Chunichi's motive for pushing the pick, but Nippon-Ham, Yomiuri, and Yakult also put in No. 1 bids on him, so there must've been reasoning behind theirs too. Though Nippon-Ham does love a flashy, bandwagon-y pick
It's actually wild that once Nao joined, Chunichi Shimbun's sales in the Hida region overtook the Gifu Shimbun
Honestly I think most pro ballplayers these days are just watered-down Ohtanis
Takahashi Shūhei topping out at that level was on Chunichi's coaching too
Guess that just shows how much the gap between levels has widened
Well, high draft picks do tend to get looked after generously even after retiring. The reason is that treating them shabbily would hurt the team's scouting relationships down the road
Can a team that keeps a guy around with that little ambition even win, though?
Chunichi isn't trying to win anyway, so does it matter? If they were playing for real there's no way they'd be missing the Climax Series as often as they do
I think a team that can't even properly write off a throwaway game is the bigger problem
Background and key points
Kō Nao was Chunichi’s first-round pick in the 2018 draft out of Osaka Toin High School — that year Nippon-Ham, Yomiuri, and Yakult also placed first-round bids on him, and Chunichi won the negotiating rights in the lottery. In high school he played both shortstop and pitcher and batted cleanup for a Koshien-winning team, earning a reputation as an all-around talent. Since turning pro he’s been shuffled repeatedly between shortstop, pitcher, and outfield, entering his eighth season this year without ever settling into a fixed role. What split opinion in the thread wasn’t so much his usage as how to read the front office’s stance — why he’s been kept on this long without a set position — with some pointing to the team’s relationship with local media as a factor. That said, there’s been no official word yet on the CBC special or on what happens to him next, so it’s worth remembering everything here is speculation and commentary from 5ch, nothing more.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Chunichi’s Kō Nao (Year 8) — Things Look Ominous Once This Season Ends wwwwwww“.
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