By Ryan Bologna
Jan. 21, 2025
New York Sports Nation

With the New York Yan­kees los­ing out on Roki Sasa­ki to the Los Ange­les Dodgers, many are won­der­ing how they can make the Bronx more appeal­ing for Japan­ese play­ers in the future.

The Yan­kees have now lost out on Shohei Ohtani, Yoshi­nobu Yamamo­to and Sasa­ki, and that is a dis­ap­point­ing fact for a lot of fans.

For many, the next name to keep an eye on is infield­er Mune­ta­ka Muraka­mi from the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.

Yan­kees announc­er Michael Kay even recent­ly said that he knows the orga­ni­za­tion would like to have him.

“Now, the slug­ging first base­man Muraka­mi is going to be a free agent at the end of this year,” Kay said on his radio show, accord­ing to Jim­my Has­cup of NJ.com. “I know the Yan­kees would love to have him. That’s why they don’t want to sign a long-term deal for a first base­man. Are they going to be able to get him, or is he going to end up on the West Coast?”

Muraka­mi is set to come over to MLB in 2026, and the Yan­kees’ sign­ing Paul Gold­schmidt to a one-year, $12.5 mil­lion con­tract does line up to leave first base open for the Japan­ese slugger.

How­ev­er, there are some real con­cerns when it comes to Murakami’s game as far as how he will trans­late to MLB. It is unknown if Kay’s report tru­ly rep­re­sents the Yan­kees’ mind­set, but Murakami’s 2025 sea­son is vital to how much inter­est teams will have in him as a free agent.

Muraka­mi right­ful­ly got a lot of atten­tion for his 2021 and 2022 sea­sons. In 2021, he post­ed a slash line of .278/.408/566 with 39 home runs, only to put up an even bet­ter sea­son in 2022 with a .318/.458/.711 slash line and 56 home runs, accord­ing to Base­ball Reference.

The 2022 sea­son was per­fect­ly timed with the 2023 World Base­ball Clas­sic, where Muraka­mi had mul­ti­ple big moments. He hit a walk-off dou­ble in the semi­fi­nals against Team Mex­i­co and then hit a game-tying home run against Team USA.

Muraka­mi cer­tain­ly left an impres­sion on many who nev­er saw him play before the World Base­ball Clas­sic in 2023. As a result, he has been viewed as the next star slug­ger from Japan to come to MLB. How­ev­er, many fans have not tracked Murakami’s per­for­mance in Japan since then, so it is easy to see why some are miss­ing the con­cerns that have pre­sent­ed them­selves over the last two seasons.

In 2023 and 2024, Muraka­mi post­ed slash lines of .256/.375/.500 and .244/.379/.472. The regres­sion itself is not a con­cern, as the last two years have marked a dead-ball era for the NPB. How­ev­er, the con­cern is regard­ing Murakami’s strike­out rates, which have spiked about 10% in 2023 and 2024 com­pared to his dom­i­nant sea­sons in 2021 and 2022.

As you can see below, Murakami’s strike­out rates have spiked sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the last two seasons:

  • 2021: 21.63%
  • 2022: 20.92%
  • 2023: 28.14%
  • 2024: 29.51%

In addi­tion to this, Murakami’s in-zone con­tact rate of 74.1% (as of July 9, 2024) was by far the worst in NPB, accord­ing to Yuri Kara­sawa of World Base­ball Net­work. It is pos­si­ble that the com­po­si­tion of the base­balls in 2023 and 2024 is play­ing a part in the increase in strike­outs. Still, this type of pro­file will remind many of play­ers like Joey Gal­lo, who had sev­er­al suc­cess­ful years with the Texas Rangers but fell off a cliff when he was trad­ed to the Yan­kees in 2021.

With MLB pitch­ers throw­ing at faster veloc­i­ties and with bet­ter stuff when it comes to move­ment, there is rea­son for skep­ti­cism when it comes to Muraka­mi lim­it­ing strike­outs enough to be a pro­duc­tive hitter.

The oth­er com­po­nent of all of this is that Muraka­mi is not viewed as a good defend­er. The expec­ta­tion is that he will be a first base­man or des­ig­nat­ed hit­ter type of play­er in MLB, which puts a lot more pres­sure on him to be an elite offen­sive play­er. That fact could take the Dodgers out of the pic­ture, how­ev­er, with Ohtani and Fred­die Free­man on the ros­ter for the fore­see­able future.

The good news is that Murakami’s pow­er is obvi­ous, as you can see with his home run num­bers in NPB over the years, his mon­ster home run in the World Base­ball Clas­sic and hard-hit rates that remain strong despite his over­all regres­sion in 2023 and 2024.

When Muraka­mi con­nects, good things hap­pen. He still has the upside of being a very good hit­ter in MLB, but there are red flags. If he mit­i­gates the strike­outs and comes with­in even a shout­ing dis­tance of his 2022 sea­son in 2025, then he could be in for a big pay­day. If he per­forms more in line with his 2023 and 2024 sea­sons, the Yan­kees need to have real­is­tic expec­ta­tions for him at the MLB lev­el if they do plan on sign­ing him.