Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami may be the most difficult free agent to evaluate as MLB's Hot Stove gets underway.
The 25-year-old, left-handed slugger is coming stateside and has an extreme boom-or-bust profile driven by serious power and terrifying swing-and-miss concerns.
Is his ceiling worth betting on? Or are his flaws too much to overcome? Let’s figure it out.
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D.J. Short
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▶ Murakami in Review
Murakami debuted for the Yakult Swallows in the Nippon Professional League at 18 years old and was instantly a premier power hitter.
His 103 homers over his first three seasons led the league. Mind you, these were his age-19 through age-21 seasons. Just a few years later, he became the youngest player in NPB history to reach 200 home runs.
MUNETAKA. MURAKAMI.
— Shawn Spradling (@Shawn_Spradling) May 15, 2024
At just 24 years and 103 days old, Murakami has become the youngest player in NPB history to hit 200 home runs
He is over a year younger than MLB’s record holder, Mel Ott (25 years, 144 days)pic.twitter.com/aANq2IKZ7T
In the midst of breaking that record, Murakami’s 2022 season was the stuff of legends. He won the triple crown and hit a whopping 56 homers. That’s the second-most in NPB history, trailing only Wladimir Balentín’s 60 in 2013.
Just 22 years old at the time, he looked like one of the best power hitters on earth and someone that would command a superstar-level contract when he eventually was posted for MLB teams to sign.
Then, some troubling swing-and-miss issues emerged.
During that standout 2022 season, Murakami had a 20.9% strikeout rate. That along with his swinging strikes have risen sharply since.
| Year | K% | Whiff% | SwSt% |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 20.9 | 31.7 | 12.9 |
| 2023 | 28.1 | 34.3 | 14.3 |
| 2024 | 29.5 | 37.3 | 15.9 |
| 2025 | 28.6 | 36.7 | 17.3 |
The league average strikeout rate in the NPB was 19.4% last season. Murakami blew that out of the water and it’s clear a multi-year trend has developed.
That’s led to some scary realizations about his bat-to-ball ability. His zone contact rate was just 72.6% in 2025. That would’ve been the lowest among all qualified major league hitters.
Since 2023, only 17 hitters with at least 250 plate appearances have a z-contact rate below 77% and the list is horrifying.
Nick Kurtz and Rafael Devers being here offer some hope while the rest of this group is a disaster. A lot of players on this list have stuck around mostly because of their defense as well, which won’t be the case with Murakami.
The stuff he faced in Japan is also nowhere near what he’ll see in the big leagues.
There were only 24 instances of a pitcher in the NPB with an average fastball (four-seam, two-seam, or cutter) velocity of at least 95 mph with a minimum of 100 pitches thrown according to Yakyu Cosmopolitan’s NPB advanced database.
The average fastball velocity in MLB last year was 94.3 mph and there were 365 instances of a pitcher having a fastball that averaged at least 95 mph with at least 100 pitches thrown.
Back to Murakami, DeltaGraphs (a private advanced data source for the NPB) said he had just a .095 (2-for-21) batting average and 41.7% strikeout rate against fastballs that were at least 150 kilometers per hour (or 93.2 mph) last season.
That sample is quite small and the results seemed harsh. Other sources confirmed he had closer to a .230 average across approximately 40 batted balls and 29% whiff rate against pitches that were 93+ mph.
These samples are so tiny that they shouldn’t be a death knell for Murakami’s ability to hit velocity anyway. The fact that he hasn’t seen much of it doesn’t mean he won’t be able to adjust to it.
Also, getting this NPB data is like finding a needle in a haystack. They don’t have sites like Baseball Savant or FanGraphs with public trackman (or Hawkeye) data to sort through. They also don’t track their velocity down to the decimal like we do, so specifics are tough to come by. Converting kilometers per hour back over to miles per hour adds another layer of confusion too.
Thanks again to Yakyu Cosmopolitan and two scouts for helping me source these velocity-based results.
Murakami may have struggled worse against breaking balls anyway.
Pitching guru and Marquee Analyst Lance Brozdowski has a great video out on his YouTube Channelbreaking down Murakami and other Japanese players being posted this winter. In it, he shared that Murakami had a 49% whiff rate against breaking balls last season.
Inversely, Lance made a great comparison with Murakami and not all hitters in MLB, but left-handed ones that had similar batted ball data to him.
That group who matched his 17° hard-hit launch and 108 mph 90th percentile exit velocity were Shohei Ohtani, Nick Kurtz, Kyle Schwarber, Riley Greene, Corbin Carroll, Matt Wallner, and Wilyer Abreu.
Murakami made less contact than those seven against lower quality pitching, but they at least show an avenue to him being a productive hitter.
Regardless of these swing-and-miss concerns, Murakami still makes excellent swing decisions. He had a 73.9% zone swing rate and 24.6% chase rate last season according to Yakyu Cosmopolitan’s database.
Here’s a list of every player in MLB last season to have a z-swing rate between 72% and 75% and a chase rate between 23% and 26% with at least 150 PA.
| Player | Z-Swing% | Chase% | Z-Contact% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corey Seager | 75.0 | 23.6 | 83.8 |
| Marcus Semien | 73.0 | 24.2 | 88.3 |
| Dansby Swanson | 72.4 | 24.2 | 80.8 |
| Munetaka Murakami (NPB)* | 73.9* | 24.6* | 73.4* |
Purely in terms of swing decisions, this is an excellent list to be a part of. It’s still necessary to highlight that disastrous zone contact rate because it truly is a disaster. Yet, there’s something to be said about swinging at the right pitches as often as he does.
Especially with his raw power. His max exit velocity in the NPB last season was 116.5 mph. That was just a shade beneath Junior Caminero’s 116.7 mph max EV and was harder than Juan Soto or Cal Raleigh hit a ball. He also hit this 115.1 mph home run off Merrill Kelly in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
A quick answer from Japan!
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) March 21, 2023
Munetaka Murakami solo homer to tie this thing up! pic.twitter.com/8CJJsoe1M2
When Murakami connects, he hits the ball hard and he hits it in the air. That’s great. He also mostly swings at the right pitches and could run a walk rate up there with the league’s best. That’s also great.
The question is if he can make enough contact for these carrying tools to even matter.
There will be a lot of pressure on his bat too. While he played third base in Japan, he’s not considered a passable defender there and will likely be relegated to first base and designated hitter duties with whoever signs him.
▶ Market Outlook
MLB teams will have to walk the tightrope between evaluating Murakami for what he’s been over the last few seasons — a flawed slugger with little to no defensive value – and who he hopes to be again – a game-breaking power hitter.
If he’s viewed as the former, he could be stuck with short-term deals we often see for older, one dimensional, DH-types. Something like Joc Pederson’s two-year, $37 million deal with the Rangers or Rhys Hoskins’ two-year, $34 million deal with the Brewers.
Yet, Murakami isn’t in his mid-30s like they are. He can’t even rent a car yet in America. There’s still tantalizing upside here. Some teams will bet on his ridiculous raw power and convince themselves they can navigate through his deficiencies with a little player development magic.
It’s rare to find players this young and this volatile on the open market though.
Oftentimes, players with this type of profile don’t reach free agency until they’re much older. It just takes them longer to find their foothold in the majors. That delays their team control through these prime years and when they’re finally available, they've already lost a step. That’s not the case with Murakami, which makes his situation so rare.
We can probably glean something from other players who’ve signed from Japan and Korea over the last few years.
Masataka Yoshida and Seiya Suzuki also lack defensive value and received nearly identical five-year deals at a $17 million and $18 million average annual value, respectively.
Looking back, Suzuki’s deal has been a success and Yoshida’s is a bit of a disaster. That was generally the consensus when each was signed, too.
Also, both were far more consistent and didn’t swing-and-miss as much in the NPB as Murakami. They were also closer to 30 when they posted.
The Giants signed Jung Hoo Lee to a six year, $113 million contract ($18.8M AAV) two years ago and while a completely different type of player to Murakami – plus defender in center field and contact-oriented hitter – he similarly had an outlier season offensively that likely drove his contract value up.
He hit 65 total homers in seven KBO seasons and 23 came in one year. It was the only time he hit more than 15 in a single season and second where he hit more than seven.
The dream he could hit for even average power along with that speed, contact, and defense helped him land a deal probably larger than his skillset warranted. He has just 10 homers in 187 MLB games, albeit in one of the most difficult home parks to hit in.
In the end, whoever takes the plunge to sign Murakami will have to have a player development plan in place ready to solve his contact issues.
There’s also a question as to whether or not he is ready for those difficult conversations. Jeff Passan had a great note in his piece about Roki Sasaki’s late season turnaround that it took him months to heed the Dodgers’ advice in overhauling his mechanics.
If a team has ideas to try and solve Murakami’s contact issues, will he listen to them? Or rest on his laurels as a heralded phenom? There’s no way to know this and nothing about Sasaki’s situation makes it more or less likely Murakami is ready to make adjustments. It’s just an additional variable to consider.
▶ Best Fits
Padres: Most major league front offices are risk averse and prefer to play it safe. AJ Preller does not fall into that lot. If anyone out there would want to take a big swing and see if Murakami can reach his ceiling, Preller may be the guy. Especially with holes at first base and DH on San Diego’s roster.
Mariners: Sticking on the west coast, Josh Naylor is a free agent and Jerry Dipoto made it clear that the two sides are unlikely to reunite. With that, Murakami’s market could wind up quiet enough to give the eternally cheap Mariners a chance to take a big swing without paying top dollar.
Red Sox: Desperate for a middle-of-the-order bat and first baseman, Murakami could be that guy. He could also easily not be that guy. At least Boston has plenty of recent player development success stories from young players they can boast in negotiations and use to give themselves confidence in taking on this risk.
Mets: There’s a gaping hole at first base in Queens without Pete Alonso and they don’t have an obvious DH on the roster either. Early indications are that they’re not interested, but the fit makes sense.
Contract Prediction
Murakami’s serious flaws and lack of defensive value will make his deal much cheaper than initial reports suggest. There will be an acknowledgment of his ceiling though driven by the gaudy power and plus-plus swing decisions.
Using Suzuki and Yoshida’s deals as a base, Murakami will land in a similar range and it will be fascinating to watch his development. I’m expecting him to build some opt-outs into the contract as well, assuming he’ll want a chance to seek a larger one while he’s still so young if something clicks.
