Munetaka Murakami will make his decision within the next five days. Japan’s premier slugger is expected to sign with an MLB team after being posted by the Yakult Swallows. The 45-day process began on November 8, meaning Murakami has until December 22 to put pen to paper.
Murakami’s camp has played things very close to the vest. While they’ve undoubtedly spent the past month speaking with teams, there hasn’t been any reporting about which clubs are involved. It’s inherently more difficult from the outside to project the market for players without any major league track record. A lot depends on individual teams’ scouting evaluations.
That’s particularly true in Murakami’s case. Scouts are unanimous in praising his monster power potential. The lefty hitter drilled 56 home runs in his age-22 season a few years back. That’s an outlier but he has another four seasons with between 31 and 39 longballs. That doesn’t include this year, in which oblique injuries limited him to 69 games. Murakami connected on 24 homers while hitting .286/.392/.659 across 263 plate appearances — which would have put him on a 55-60 homer pace over a full season. His exit velocities are off the charts. There’s a chance he’s in the Kyle Schwarber or Shohei Ohtani tier in terms of left-handed raw power.
As is often the case, the bigger question is whether he’ll make enough contact to be an impact bat in MLB. Murakami has fanned a near-26% rate in his NPB career. That was up to 28.6% this year and closer to 30% in his last full season in 2024. Hitters can thrive while striking out that often — Schwarber has gone down on strikes at a 28.8% rate over the last four years — but Murakami’s strikeout rate seems likely to climb against big league competition.
The average pitcher quality and velocity is higher in MLB than it is at the NPB level. Should Murakami be expected to strike out more than 30% of the time in the majors? Do teams expect him to punch out more than a third of the time? Scouts could have differing evaluations on Murakami’s pure hitting ability.
There’s little doubt that the bat needs to drive the profile. Listed at 6’2″ and 213 pounds, Murakami isn’t viewed as an especially rangy third baseman. He’s likely to end up at first base before the end of his contract. Some teams might project him to the position on day one. Others could feel he’d be a passable third baseman in the short term, but his defense isn’t likely to improve with age.
Murakami turns 26 in February. He’s younger than essentially any top-tier domestic free agent, who’d need to play six full seasons in the big leagues before they can hit the market. This is a chance to add a potential prime-age superstar, but there’s also massive downside given the swing-and-miss and defensive questions. It’s likely that whatever deal he signs will come with one or more opt-out chances that allow Murakami to get back to free agency a few years from now if he has proven he can hit MLB pitching.
MLBTR predicted an eight-year, $180MM deal in ranking him the offseason’s #4 free agent. That’s admittedly without a huge amount of confidence given the challenges of projecting this profile. Let’s take a look at which teams are best positioned to make this move.
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