The premier slugger from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, Murakami arrives stateside to a rebuilding team where he can instantly make an impact.
Free agency predictions are always a fun part of the start of every MLB offseason, where the media minds from across the league make their grandiose forecasts on where the biggest stars will be heading.
A constant across those predictions is the expectation that some teams are just not going to be involved in the bidding for the league’s top players, with the Chicago White Sox chief among these teams.
Despite calling the country’s third-largest media market home, the White Sox have never eclipsed $100 million on a free agent contract, with their five-year, $75 million pact with outfielder Andrew Benintendi representing the largest financial commitment in the team’s history.
While the White Sox didn’t blow past this number on Sunday, they defied expectations of a very quiet offseason by signing top Japanese target Munetaka Murakami to a two-year contract worth $34 million.
Though a much smaller contract than what many across the baseball world anticipated for him, which can perhaps be attributed to Murakami’s high strikeout rate in NPB, the move quickly emerges as a possible win-win for both Murakami and the White Sox.
Murakami, who will be 26 on Opening Day, has compiled wildly impressive numbers through eight seasons in NPB, including a single-season home run record with 56 long balls in 2022. The slugger has hit 246 home runs in his NPB career, though that has also come alongside 1,068 strikeouts in 3,515 at-bats. Accompanied with 678 walks in that same time frame, Murakami looks to be a three-outcome player to some degree at the MLB level.
Which is just fine for the White Sox, who jumped in and took advantage of other teams’ grievances to give Murakami a solid average annual value while also giving the young slugger a chance to hit free agency ahead of his age-28 season to cash in on the payday many were expecting this time around.
Murakami is expected to play first base for the South Siders, which can only give the White Sox fans dreams that his production would be at all reminiscent of the last time the South Siders looked internationally at the position, with José Abreu going on to play nine stellar seasons with the club.
The obvious home run pop added to the White Sox lineup can make the South Siders a legitimate power threat next year, speeding up a rebuild that felt eternal after a record-setting 121-loss season in 2024.
The White Sox received plenty of promising results from the young talent already on the roster – top farmhand Colson Montgomery finished fifth in AL Rookie of the Year voting with 21 home runs and a 130 OPS+ over just 71 games. Likewise, Kyle Teel, widely seen as the team’s catcher of the future, amassed 1.9 WAR with eight home runs and a 121 OPS+ in 78 games.
Chicago is undoubtedly still hoping for a noticeable rebound from Luis Robert Jr., who displayed a mixed bag of results in 2025 that included a below-average 85 OPS+ alongside 14 home runs and a career-best 33 stolen bases.
Suddenly, it’s quite feasible to see how half of the White Sox lineup could be quite formidable in 2026, assuming Murakami represents the biggest splash for the franchise this offseason.
Murakami enters the 2026 season coming off a 22-home run campaign with a .273/.379/.663/1.043 slash line in his final year with NPB’s Yakult Swallows, who finished well out of playoff contention with a 57-79 record.
Speaking of playoff contention, Murakami’s addition to the White Sox doesn’t exactly bring the South Siders to October – something one would think Murakami contended with and was aware of when signing with Chicago.
While Murakami fills an obvious void at first base and seems to vastly improve the club’s lineup, the team remains full of question marks, particularly with a pitching staff that lacks any semblance of a true ace or closer.
Though the ChiSox will likely look internally to fill some of these holes, top pitching prospects Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith, both 22 years old, are probably still at least another full season away from contributing at the big league level.
I certainly wouldn’t start planning any parades near 35th and Shields next year, but this move is the kind of deal the White Sox simply never make – even if the dollar value and length of commitment doesn’t at all match what a blockbuster deal typically looks like.
For once, there was an incredibly enticing free agent target that seemed to only be on the table for the league’s high-spending, big-market teams that the White Sox were able to capture, even on the heels of a 60-102 campaign.
In a worst-case scenario, the White Sox are simply right back where they were heading into this season anyways, with a question mark at a position everyone assumed they’d have one at. In the best-case scenario, Murakami serves as a catalyst for a rejuvenated White Sox offense that makes plenty of noise and climbs towards the range of 70-to-75 wins.
With how these past few years have gone for the White Sox, I don’t know if there are any fans that wouldn’t be jubilant with that outcome.
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