I was wrong.
When the White Sox signed Munetaka Murakami to a two-year, $34-million deal, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that something was wrong with him. A cursory glance at his NPB stats snowballed into a statistical analysis on his hypothetical impact on the 2025 Sox before he even stepped foot in the batter’s box, and ultimately landed on a conclusion that Murakami would be underwhelming.
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While my predictions and assessments were grounded in logical projections and modeling, I’ll quote Dodgers and Blue Jays managers Dave Roberts and John Schneider from their latest interview with Jeff Passan: “Baseball happened.”
Murakami’s first 26 games in the big leagues has far exceeded expectations. While he unfortunately has lived up to his expectation of being an all-or-nothing hitter with a 40.3% whiff rate and 32.1% strikeout rate (ranked in the bottom-first and -eighth percentiles), his “all” has been nothing short of historic. Murakami’s healthy .256/.398/.622 slash line and towering 1.020 OPS indicate that he’s already near his ceiling of being the Japanese Babe Ruth.
Before the Sox’s 5-4 win over the Nationals, Murakami’s name was already etched in the history books for tying Shohei Ohtani’s record for most consecutive games with a home run by any Japanese-born player, owning the longest MLB rookie home run streak, and tying the franchise record homering in five consecutive games.
But his 11th home run was different.
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Coming off the bat at 104 mph and traveling 415 feet, Murakami’s elegant and seemingly effortless lefty swing on Friday night flipped a switch numerically and emotionally:
