Kosuke Kato
is a former Japanese professional baseball pitcher. He was drafted 2nd in the 2000 Nippon Professional Baseball draft and spent 15 years in the league with the Chiba Lotte Marines, Orix Buffaloes, Yokohama BayStars and Hanshin Tigers. He has signed with the Fukushima Hopes of the Baseball Challenge League as a player/coach for the 2016 season. Early life Kato started playing baseball at four years of age, and at the age of five became a left-handed pitcher. When at Shimizu Commercial High School, he was identified along with Takahiro Yamazaki as a leading pitcher within the Shizuoka Prefecture competition. However, at the summer tournament in his third (and final) year of high school, Kato faced Gotenba High School in the first round and gave up 15 hits and 12 runs in a resounding loss. Kato has cited this regrettable performance as his later motivation. At Nihon University, Kato joined the first team squad from the spring of his second year. At the December intensive camp, he undertook a grueling training schedule of throwing 5000 pitches in his second year and 8000 pitches in his third year. In the first division of the Eastern University league he made a total of