SI:AM | White Sox Rookie Munetaka Murakami Homers Again to Continue Red-Hot Start

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I know I’m not the only one who’s less interested in the NFL draft than I have been in years.

In today’s SI:AM:
🔮 Breer’s one and only mock draft
🤷‍♂️ Mets win, but so what?
🏀 Men’s hoops teams with holes to fill

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Too bad the White Sox still stink

MLB’s most fascinating hitter plays for one of its worst teams.

When Munetaka Murakami signed a two-year, $34 million contract with the White Sox over the winter, he was viewed as a real wild card. Once considered a no-doubt future MLB star after hitting 56 home runs in 2022, Murakami’s stock had fallen in recent years as his strikeout numbers began to grow. He particularly struggled against high-velocity pitching, which raised concerns about his ability to transition to MLB. As a result, he only signed a short-term deal worth a relatively modest $17 million per year.

But Murakami has been one of the best hitters in baseball over the first month of the season. He went 3-for-5 with a homer and two RBIs in Chicago’s 11–7 loss to the Diamondbacks on Wednesday night. It was his fifth straight game with a homer, tying both the White Sox franchise record for longest home run streak and the record for most consecutive games with a homer by a Japanese player.

Murakami hasn’t just been killing it over his last five games, though. He now has 10 homers on the season, second most in the majors behind only Astros star Yordan Alvarez (11). He also ranks third in OPS (1.026, trailing Alvarez and the Yankees’ Ben Rice) and has the fourth-highest walk rate.

Murakami is still struggling to make contact, as had been expected when he came over from Japan. But when he does put the bat on the ball, he hits it hard. He ranks among the top 2% of MLB hitters in both average exit velocity and hard-hit rate. Of the 21 hits he’s had this season, 18 have left the bat at over 100 mph. Only three players have more such hits this season.

“I'm just running out of things to say,” White Sox manager Will Venable said of Murakami after Wednesday’s game. “Obviously, he continues to put himself in a really good spot to take good swings on good pitches, making great swing decisions, and making a ton of contact. And when he hits it, he hits it really hard. Even the singles he's hitting, he's hitting hard, and, obviously, the damage is incredible, too. So, yeah, it's impressive to watch.”

Murakami’s player profile is captivating. He’s still striking out a ton and struggling to make contact, even on pitches in the strike zone, but he punishes pitchers on the rare occasions his bat does meet the ball. He’s displayed a very discerning eye at the plate, with the fourth-highest walk rate in the majors (20.2%), but he also has the 19th-highest strikeout rate. He whiffs on a staggering 41.7% of pitches that he swings at, the third-highest rate in the majors.

It’s a fascinating mix of skills and shortcomings. He strikes out just as much as his detractors feared he would, but he’s made up for it by working walks at an elite rate. He doesn’t chase pitches out of the zone, and yet he still swings and misses more than almost anyone else in the league. He hardly ever makes contact, but the contact he does make couldn’t be better.

It’s an unusual combination of traits that makes it tough to think of a player similar to Murakami. The best comparison I can think of now is a more patient Giancarlo Stanton—tons of swing-and-miss but also tons of thunderous contact. What makes Murakami different from Stanton, though, is that Stanton chases lots of pitches outside the zone and rarely walks.

It’s too early to make too many grand pronouncements about Murakami’s big league career, but he’s off to a better start than anyone could have expected. He’s had 104 MLB plate appearances, which is too few to declare him baseball’s next big thing but also enough to indicate that the White Sox may have gotten a bargain. Big league pitchers may figure out how to deal with him better as the season progresses, but he’s well on his way to being a more productive hitter than teams thought he would be this winter.

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The top five…

… things I saw last night:
5. Mike Trout’s eighth homer of the season. It’s great to see him healthy again and playing like an All-Star.
4. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s taunt after hitting a jumper over Dillon Brooks.
3. The 30–3 run the Pistons went on to put away the Magic in Game 2 and tie the series.
2. Wyatt Johnston’s game-winning goal for the Stars in double overtime against the Wild. Dallas now leads the series 2–1. Five days into the NHL playoffs, we’ve already had five overtime games, including two double-overtime.
1. Oneil Cruz’s home run that skipped off the top of the foul pole.

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