{"id":77302,"date":"2025-12-21T19:16:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T19:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/77302\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T19:16:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T19:16:26","slug":"white-sox-sign-munetaka-murakami-to-34-million-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/77302\/","title":{"rendered":"White Sox sign Munetaka Murakami to $34 million contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White Sox have landed an intriguing free agent with the potential to add some serious power to their lineup.<\/p>\n

Japanese infielder Munetaka Murakami agreed to a two-year, $34 million contract with the White Sox on Sunday, The Post\u2019s Jon Heyman confirmed.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old slugger, who is coming over from the Yakult Swallows, hit 56 home runs during the 2022 season and has four other 30-homer campaigns.<\/p>\n

\"MunetakaMunetaka Murakami Getty Images<\/p>\n

His strikeout rate that eclipsed 28 percent over the last three years made teams wary, but it\u2019s a fairly low-risk move for a White Sox team looking to turn things around.<\/p>\n

The corner infielder is expected to play first base in Chicago, according to ESPN.<\/p>\n

During an injury-plagued 2025 season, Murakami still hit 22 home runs in 59 games with a 1.043 OPS.<\/p>\n

\"MunetakaMunetaka Murakami (l.) and Shohei Ohtani (r.) celebrate Japan winning the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Murakami was part of the Japan team that won the 2023 World Baseball Classic alongside Shohei Ohtani, Yu Darvish, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki.<\/p>\n

Since winning the AL Central in 2021 with 93 wins and losing in the ALDS, the White Sox went 81-81 in 2022, 61-101 in 2023, 41-121 in 2024 (setting a modern-day record for losses) and 60-102 this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The White Sox have landed an intriguing free agent with the potential to add some serious power to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[25677,20,3473,9,11,10,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-77302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-chicago-white-sox","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-mlb-free-agency","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}