Though it’s becoming increasingly rare as enthusiasm for Japanese culture continues to spread, you’ll still sometimes see okonomiyaki referred to in English as Japanese pizza. Okonomiyaki is not, of course,
pizza. It’s a pancake studded with cabbage, along with meat, bonito fish flakes, sometimes noodles, and all sorts of condiments. But some choose to call it “pizza” in an attempt to explain it to Americans who may be a little baffled by the idea of a cabbage pancake. The shape is close enough, at least. Making matters even more confusing is that there is such a thing as Japanese pizza, which often involves tuna, corn, and/or mayonnaise. But I digress. The point is that we often reach for comparisons as a first step in explanation, and those comparisons must always sacrifice some degree of accuracy. The comparison to pizza worked well enough, it would seem, because okonomiyaki has made its way to America from Japan.
Speaking of that journey, Tokyo Yakult Swallows slugger Munetaka Murakami is planning to take the same trip, hopping on a plane at Narita or Haneda airport and landing… somewhere to be determined. Reports are that the Phillies have an interest, and as such, you may have an interest too. But Japan’s Central League hasn’t made their games watchable in the States, and so you likely aren’t too familiar with the league’s stars. The quickest way to introduce you to Murakami might be, of course, with a comparison.
Actually, the quickest way to introduce you would be to read Joe’s piece on Murakami from yesterday. But after that, a comparison: Murakami is a power hitter who hits a tremendous number of dingers and a possesses equally tremendous tendency to whiff and strike out. That sounds familiar. It also sounds very close to our beloved Kyle Schwarber. But how close? Let’s take a look at the numbers and see where the comparison holds, and where it breaks down.
Start, of course, with the home runs. In 2025, Schwarber hit 56 moonshots. It would be a little too on the nose if Murakami hit the same number this year. He didn’t. But he did hit exactly 56 in 2022, setting the NPB record for a player born in Japan (the overall record of 60 belongs to fellow Swallow Wladimir Balentien). He hasn’t hit the 50 mark since, though he’s still bashed the ball, posting 31 and 33 homers in 2023 and 2024. This past season, he hit only 22… in an injury-shortened season of 56 games. To use some advanced sabermetric terminology, he make ball go boom. Specifically, he posted a Home Run/Fly Ball ratio of 36.1% this past season. Granted, that 56 game sample size is reasonably small. His HR/FB was 24.4% in 2023 and 24.1% in 2024. In that record-setting 2023, it was 38.9%. Comparatively, Kyle Schwarber’s career HR/FB is 25.4%. So, safe to say that Murakami hits dingers like Schwarber.
The swing decisions and plate discipline are similar as well. Schwarber has swung at 41.3% of pitches faced across his career, Murakami’s rate is about the same. Schwarber’s career K % is 28.4%, close to what Murakami has posted across the past three campaigns— though it’s worth noting he posted significantly lower rates from 2020 through 2022. Schwarber’s career walk rate is 14.2%; Murakami has only posted a BB% beneath that once. His most recent full season saw him accept the free pass 17.2% of the time, and that magical 2022 saw him do it 19.3% of the time. Nevertheless, both are good at taking freebies from pitchers.
That being said, he doesn’t hit the ball hard quite as often as Schwarber does: Murakami’s hard hit ratio typically hovers around 35-37%, whereas Schwarber’s has been in the mid-40s for the past two seasons. He’s also less likely to pull the ball: Schwarber has done so about 50% of the time over the past three seasons, whereas Murakami has done so about 40-44% of the time. Pulled fly balls are the best way to do damage, so advantage Schwarber on that front.
Another difference is in contact rate: Schwarber has connected on 71.4% of swings across his career; Murakami only reached that mark in one season of his career (2021), and has fallen short of it ever since. He connected with just 61% of his swings in his most recent full season. Schwarber’s career swinging strike rate is 11.7%; Murakami has posted rates higher than that in each of his seasons save 2021.
You’re probably starting to get the picture: Murakami is very Schwarberlike, albeit with a lesser contact skill and a lower tendency to pull the ball. If that were the end of the story, you’d probably want to see Murakami sign his name on the dotted line right now. Who wouldn’t want Schwarber 2.0? But the comparison we’ve made is a bit misleading. We didn’t really compare Murakami to Schwarber. Instead, we compared NPB Murakami to Schwarber. And that’s an important distinction. Top-line NPB pitching is superb (as, unfortunately, all Phillies fans are now aware), but taken as a whole, MLB pitching is substantially better. That means that NPB hitters typically won’t perform as well in MLB as they did in NPB, at least not at first. In particular, they tend to struggle against high velocity, of which there’s simply a lot less of in NPB. Bradley Woodrum of Baseball Prospectus projected how various NPB hitters might perform in MLB based on their performance against pitches of 94 MPH plus, and his system suggested that Murakami’s 2025 performance would equate to a wRC+ of 108 in MLB. That’s far below the 132 Schwarber posted in the same year, though in line with Schwarber’s performances in 2023 and 2024. But another model Woodrum used suggested the possibility that Murakami’s 2025 would amount to a sub-average performance in MLB.
Projecting how any new face in MLB, whether they enter by posting or promotion, is a crapshoot, but it may be more of one for Murakami than most. Whoever signs him will have to deal with uncertainty. And yes, there is uncertainty about who will sign him— the conventional wisdom is now that Japanese players are keen on playing with their fellow countrymen, and that as such the Dodgers will simply get any NPB player they want, but it wasn’t so long ago that the conventional wisdom insisted that Ohtani wanted to be the only Japanese player on his team. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the Dodgers did bring another member of Samurai Japan to Chavez Ravine, but it’s not guaranteed. Speaking of surprises, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if Murakami did become Schwarberesque once stateside, mashing takoyaki (octopus-stuffed doughballs) like Kyle mashes meatballs. It also wouldn’t be terribly surprising if his swing and miss issues resulted in him flailing helplessly against MLB hurlers.
Either way, he won’t really be the Japanese Schwarber. He’ll be Munetaka Murakami. But wouldn’t it be nice if he did join the Phillies, and did turn out to rake like Kyle does? Maybe more Japanese fans would start watching Phillies games. Maybe they’d call Schwarber the American Murakami.