Last week, I wrote about an NPB star that the Yankees should make great effort to sign, right-hander Tatsuya Imai, and now I have to delve into a guy I think they’d rather stay away from. In a league that resembles
MLB in the late-60s in terms of offensive production, Munetaka Murakami boasts 70/70 game power and clubbed a staggering 56 home runs and Triple Crown season in 2022. In the immediate aftermath it looked like Murakami wasn’t just NPB’s best hitter, but one of the very, very best sluggers in all of baseball.
And then he started to strike out.
Jumping from 20 percent to 28 percent in 2023, then 29 and 28 percent again in the successive seasons, NPB hurlers found some holes in Murakami’s swing. Of particular note is his struggle against the heater — 63 percent contact rate over the last three years, and a miserable .095 average against pitches 93 mph or harder this past season. The average fastball across all of MLB has been above 93 mph since 2017.
There are also questions about his long-term defensive play. He’s ostensibly a third baseman and any team that signs him will at least give the hot corner the old college try, but Murakami will be at first base before long. That the Yankees enjoyed so much success with Ben Rice this season, seemingly ticketing the powerful lefty for everyday play in 2026, leaves questions about just where NPB’s slugger will play.
Finally, there’s a cost issue. Unlike Shohei Ohtani or Rōki Sasaki, he’s not considered an amateur free agent, so there are no spending caps on him. If you remember the Ohtani sweepstakes, because his potential earnings were capped at the time of posting, the sell was about fit, who he’d be playing with, things like that. For Sasaki it sure seemed like the burgeoning Japanese culture the Dodgers were building was significant. For Murakami, he can negotiate for whatever contract terms he wants with all 30 MLB clubs, and if the Yankees are concerned with that $300-odd million payroll number, the bidding could take them out early. This goes double if they’re actually interested in an Imai signing.
There’s definitely things to like about Munetaka — he’s never failed to reach 30 bombs in a healthy season, and the success the Yankees saw with Rice, you can definitely imagine the club being able to identify and plug the holes in Murakami’s swing, and hopefully he’s the kind of player that can make those adjustments stick. Left-handed power hitters are always going to be tantalizing to imagine in the Bronx, and he’ll be just 26 come Opening Day. You could more or less squint and see a power-hitting college bat with a strikeout issue and figure whatever club finally added him to a 26-man roster would be able to fix that.
That upside isn’t enough for me to get over the risk though, especially given the problems against velocity. We wring our hands about pitcher injury but average velo only goes in one direction, and if you can’t square up the fastball, I don’t love your MLB prospects.
