Jesse RogersMay 8, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseJesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.Follow on XMultiple Authors
CHICAGO — It took just one pitch for Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Ryan Thompson to learn what many pitchers have this season: If you make a mistake to Munetaka Murakami, you’re going to pay for it.
“I threw him one pitch, and he hit it 700 feet. If I had a longer at-bat, maybe I could figure him out,” Thompson said.
“All we know is the way he’s hitting here is different from the way he was hitting in Japan,” Thompson told ESPN not long after giving up that 451-foot blast to Murakami. “His holes are not his holes anymore. Maybe why other teams weren’t pursuing him is because he had different holes when he was with Japan. He’s changed his approach.”
“He’s done a great job of maintaining strength and flexibility. He looks very physical in the box,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “On top of that, there is a certain readiness that he’s showing to hit every pitch. He didn’t miss against us. Everyone said there is a lot of swing-and-miss but that wasn’t the case against us. The league is taking notice.”
Despite his eye-opening start, Murakami is steadfast in his desire to get better. He believes he’s just scratching the surface in his adjustment to the majors.
“It’s still a learning curve,” he said through the team interpreter. “I’m still getting used to it, but I’m seeing the ball very well.”
“It was a bad miss by everyone,” one American League official said. “In-zone miss scares people, and it was hard to project that versus improved pitching. It’s one of the blind spots of hitting projection models, so it winds up hurting the confidence for every team.”
Murakami drew more than 100 walks in three of his NPB seasons, and that knack for getting on base in addition to hitting long balls was appealing to the front offices that did consider him this winter. The White Sox were one of those teams, believing that many of the questions raised by other clubs were from a lack of opportunity — not a lack of ability.
“I know that there were concerns with the velocity, and with high-end velocity in this league, if you’ve got a hole, it just seems to get exposed,” White Sox GM Chris Getz said. “But he didn’t see much of that over there. And just because you haven’t seen it, doesn’t mean you can’t hit it.”
Given where they were in their rebuild, coming off three straight 100-loss seasons, the White Sox were also better positioned to take the risk on Murakami than contenders looking for one key player, and they signed him just before his posting window was set to end in late December.
The White Sox would love to monetize Murakami’s success the way the Los Angeles Dodgers have grown their following in Japan through the stardom of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani but know tapping into the market will be difficult — especially with a player on a two-year deal.
“The bigger hurdle is the amount of money that is spent in L.A.,” White Sox chief revenue/marketing officer Brooks Boyer said. “So much of it in Japan is what your distribution is on television there. Their national network is dominated by the Dodgers. They’ve kind of become the nation’s team.”
Not only did Murakami’s move to MLB mean adjusting to facing a new high-velocity type of pitching on a daily basis, Chicago’s desire to use him at first base — not third, where he had played the majority of his pro career — also meant learning the ins and outs of a new position.
He worked tirelessly at it in spring training with multiple coaches surrounding him on a daily basis. He’s been OK at first, making just one error while ranking near the bottom of the AL in zone rating.
“It still goes back to the determination to prove something,” Getz said. “You never really know what’s baked into the DNA of a player and what they’re striving to do.”
The fast start has caught some by surprise, but Murakami’s teammates have seen his potential since the early days of spring training and are growing used to the long balls — and an attitude that has helped Chicago rise in the standings.
And, as the pitchers who have faced Murakami have found out, when the White Sox sensation steps into the box, all it takes is one swing to turn a game around.
“I think there are going to be a lot of teams kicking themselves that they didn’t try harder to sign him,” said Arizona Diamondbacks starter Merrill Kelly. “I think there was some fear it wouldn’t translate to big league pitching. In my opinion, if you win a Triple Crown, in arguably the second-best league in the world, you can clearly hit.”
Jesse RogersMay 8, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseJesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.Follow on XMultiple Authors
CloseJesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.Follow on X