Infielder Munetaka Murakami of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows was posted by his club for MLB teams to negotiate with starting back on November 8. That window closes next Monday, December 22 at 5 p.m. ET. Jon
Morosi of FOX Sports has mentioned the Tigers as one of many teams “showing interest” in Murakami. That mention came at the beginning of Murakami’s signing window, but there haven’t really been any rumors linking him to any team at all as of yet, so it’s all still a very wide open question. We’re extremely doubtful that the Tigers supposed interest could be any more than a cursory check-in with his representatives, but the fact is that none of the big national writers seem to have any idea where Murakami will end up. Why not the Tigers? Well, since we’ve been asked a few times about him in recent weeks, let’s take a look.
The left-handed hitting slugger was drafted by the Swallows in 2017. In his eight years of professional ball, the 25-year-old has developed into one of the greatest power hitters in NPB history. In 2022, Murakami cranked 56 home runs, breaking Sadahara Oh’s single season record for a Japanese player. Wladimir Balentien, a Curacao born hitter, holds the all-time NPB record with 60 bombs back in 2013, also for the Swallows.
Murakami has all the physical traits major league teams look for in a player. He stands six-foot-two, weighing in at 213 pounds. He produces elite bat speed, posting a max swing of 85.7 mph in 2025. Max speed isn’t really a key metric, as any MLB hitter could just take a softball swing, but Murakami has the exit velocities, both in the NPB and in WBC play measured by Statcast, to back that up. In short, he’s right up with the top power hitters in the major leagues in terms of his ability to move the bat, and he hits a lot of fly balls to the pull side, the other big part of the recipe for high home run totals in the big leagues.
The problem is that he swings and misses a ton, and that bodes ill for him to be able to replicate the high value contact he produces in Japan with the same consistency against signicantly better and more consistent pitching quality in the major leagues. He’ll draw his walks and has a good understanding of the strike zone and enough discipline to wait for pitches he can crush. But against breaking and offspeed stuff he will whiff a lot, and he hasn’t shown the ability to handle consistent high velocity stuff either.
The latter worries me a little less due to the batspeed he possesses. He should be able to adapt to seeing steady amounts of 94-95 mph heat, but it’s worth remembering that NPB average fastballs are more in the 91-92 mph range, though obviously there plenty of hard throwers in the mix. NPB pitchers still focus more on trying to go deep in games, so they don’t max out to the degree that major league pitchers do, but Murakami is one of the scariest hitters in the league and tends to see a pitcher’s best stuff.
Still, even if he handles fastballs to a similar degree, he whiffs a ton to go with the huge damage he tends to do as well, posting just a 63 percent contact rate over the three seasons since his massive 2022 campaign. His strikeout rate is typically around 28 percent. Tranlated to the majors that’s potentially more like 31-33 percent, putting him into extreme territory. It takes a ton of power and walks to offset that level of strikeouts, and few major league hitters have ever managed it even for a few seasons.
More concerning is how he’ll handle the quality of breaking and offspeed stuff in the major leagues. The difference isn’t radical compared to the NPB, but there is much more consistently nasty stuff in the major leagues, and that, combined with the minor velo jump he’s going to see from major league pitching, says that he’s unlikely to thrive in the bigs without developing further. He’s young enough to do that, and he wouldn’t really need radical improvement to be a solid enough pure hitter to get to his elite power, but there is just a lot of risk here that he’s just a medicore MLB hitter with good home run totals and little value in any other part of his game.
Per FanGraphs, there are scouts and analysts who think Murakami can clean up his bat path and get a little shorter to the ball. He’s also had a few minor injuries over the past year that may have hurt his performance along the way, and an optimistic team who signs him probably believes that a player so young will get past these and back to his prime form. If so, crushing enough fastballs to be a viable big leaguer is the likely outcome. But even so, you’re still talking about a player who may hit 35 homers while striking out nearly 30 percent of the time. I have a hard time seeing that as anything but the absolute upside here.
Defensively, Murakami fits much better as a 1B/DH defensively. He’s not a bad third baseman, but his range and arm are both a little subpar for the position. So you’re really getting a pure slugger, though he’s perfectly solid at first base. There just isn’t going to be any surplus defensive value.
So, this just isn’t a player that fits the Tigers in the slightest. I’m still surprised they were even mentioned in regard to Murakami. Scott Harris and Jeff Greenberg don’t like one dimensional players, and they continue to emphasize contact ability, both in signing Gleyber Torres, and in their three drafts running the franchise. Even if Murakami was a pretty good third baseman the fit is just too off and the risk way too high for the Tigers.
If the club did get in touch with Murakami’s representatives, it was probably just more of a general move to keep their toes in the Japanese player pool and practice making their pitch. Right now though, no one really has any idea where he’s going to end up, as Ken Rosenthal stated on the Foul Territory podcast on Tuesday.
The initial thought was that it would take a top payroll team willing to take a risk and hand out of big contract to a player who possibly could develop a bit more into one of the better power hitters in the game, but who could also flame out. However, the concerns around him may mean that he doesn’t really get the huge nine figure contract he’s hoping for as a Japanese star headed into just his age 26 season. If so, that might bring more teams into the mix who are willing to take a swing at landing big time talent for mid-tier free agent prices. The Tigers almost certainly won’t be one of them.
It would be fun for the Tigers to land a Japanese star who works out well. Murakami just isn’t the guy. We may not know where he’ll land, but it’s clear is that he’s not going to be a Detroit Tiger.
