With Shohei Ohtani going through a bit of an offensive slump, another Japanese star has caught Major League Baseball’s eye.
Munetaka Murakami has become one of the most entertaining players to watch in The Show, raking 15 home runs in his first 38 career games.
This type of production has been somewhat surprising for a player who didn’t draw that much buzz and who only got $34 million over two years from the Chicago White Sox.
According to a report by ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, teams weren’t interested in him because of his high strikeout totals.
Strikeout tendencies hurt Munetaka Murakami’s MLB chances
“Murakami struck out 977 times in 892 career NPB games, including 180 times during a subpar 2024 season. His strikeout rate was more than 28% in each of his final three seasons in Japan and his 72.6% in-zone contact rate would have been the second worst in MLB in 2025,” wrote Rogers.
This makes perfect sense. MLB features nothing but the best pitchers in the world, and failing to show plate discipline at an inferior (albeit still highly competitive) level would raise doubts about any player.
However, given how the Japanese slugger has dominated since suiting up for the Chicago White Sox, it looks like teams around the league are starting to regret that decision:
“It was a bad miss by everyone,” one American League official told Rogers. “In-zone miss scares people, and it was hard to project that versus improved pitching. It’s one of the blind spots of hitting projection models, so it winds up hurting the confidence for every team.”
To be fair, the Japanese infielder didn’t present himself as the most efficient player, and with some plate-discipline concerns, not many people thought he’d be tied with Aaron Judge for the top of the MLB lead in home runs.
The White Sox are just 17-21 for the season, but they might finally be trending in the right direction, and Murakami has most definitely turned them into must-watch television.