White Sox Rookie Munetaka Murakami Is Making Everyone Look Silly While Setting MLB Records

The Japanese slugger has already set MLB records in his first month in the league.

Munetaka Murakami leads MLB with 12 home runs in his first 29 games. | Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

MORE: MLB Standings Show Just How Desperate the Red Sox Have Become

If you asked baseball fans who would be atop MLB’s home run leaderboard heading into May, you’d have been hard pressed to find anyone giving the response of Munetaka Murakami.

The Japanese import only arrived in the U.S. this year, and wasn’t a highly sought-after free agent once being posted by his NPB club, the Yakult Swallows. He eventually reached an agreement with the White Sox, joining Chicago on a two-year, $34 million deal.

That contract is one other clubs will be looking at and questioning why they didn’t pull the trigger on signing the 26-year-old.

Murakami has been one of the best sluggers in MLB through his first 29 games. He leads the league with 12 home runs entering Tuesday, one more than Yordan Alvarez and Aaron Judge, and his .592 slugging percentage ranks seventh among all qualified hitters. He’s emerged as a three true outcome player, logging 41 strikeouts, 22 walks and the aforementioned 12 home runs in just 103 at-bats, still without hitting a single extra-base hit that didn’t leave the yard.

But why were teams balking at the opportunity to sign him in the offseason? Well, much of that is to do with the sky-high strikeout rate he had in Japan, as well as his struggles with hitting high-velocity fastballs. Murakami had a strikeout rate over 29% in his last full season in NPB back in ’24, and despite playing third base in Japan, MLB teams felt he’d be a below average defender at the hot corner and deemed he’d be better served at first base.

Those concerns weren’t inaccurate. Rather than give him time to figure things out at third, the White Sox cut right to the chase and installed him at first base on defense. Offensively, Murakami’s strikeout rate has actually increased (32.5%) since beginning his career in MLB. He’s in the bottom one percentile in whiff percentage (41.2%) and bottom six percentile in strikeout rate. And interestingly, despite his excellent swing speed, he’s only in the 29th percentile in squared-up rate.

So, how is it that he’s leading MLB in home runs and has an OPS flirting with 1.000?

Murakami currently ranks in the 94th percentile or higher in the following categories; xwOBA, xSLG, average exit velocity, barrel percentage, hard-hit percentage and walk rate. He has tremendous bat speed (74.6 mph, 79th percentile), which enables him to use his strength to leave the yard even when he doesn’t get all of a pitch. An example of that can be seen with his go-ahead home run on Monday night, his 12th of the year, that helped the White Sox secure a comeback win against the Angels.

MUNETAKA MURAKAMI'S MLB-LEADING 12th HOME RUN

White Sox have taken the lead! pic.twitter.com/VewiEdfe7d

— MLB (@MLB) April 28, 2026

This was not a particularly well-hit ball. The ball was hit with a launch angle of 48 degrees and it left the bat at 95.2 mph. It wasn’t bad contact, but it wasn’t crushed by any means. The result? It cleared the right field wall and traveled a total of 382 feet, and it would have been a home run in all 30 MLB ballparks. That’s pure strength at play there. Only eight home runs in the entire Statcast era (since 2015) have left the yard with a launch angle higher than 48 degrees. What would’ve been a routine fly ball off the bat of most hitters was crushed into the visiting bullpen by Chicago’s slugger, thanks in part to his impressive bat speed.

Perhaps more teams should have seen this coming. Across his eight-year career in NPB, he launched 246 home runs in 892 games, and owned a career slugging percentage of .557. He was also a two-time MVP who in 2022 set the single-season record for home runs by a Japanese-born player (56). But the fact that he’s made such a seamless transition to MLB has been a big surprise, and a welcome one for fans in Chicago.

Thus far, Murakami is on a historic pace in terms of his power at the plate. He’s already hit the most home runs by a rookie before the month of May in MLB history, and he's now the White Sox’s franchise leader in home runs before May, too.

It’s hard to forecast whether he can keep this level of production up throughout the duration of a full season, but he’s been a pleasant surprise for the White Sox early on, and perhaps one of the biggest bargain additions of the entire offseason across the league.

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