Japanese star third baseman Munetaka Murakami will enter the posting system today, officially starting the process of one of the most anticipated free agencies of the winter, sources told ESPN.<\/p>\n
Murakami, 25, owns the single-season home run record for a Japanese player in Nippon Professional Baseball, having hit 56 in 2022 to break Sadaharu Oh’s record 55, which was set in 1964. A prolific power hitter, Murakami leaves the Tokyo Yakult Swallows with 246 home runs over his eight seasons in Japan.<\/p>\n
His slugging prowess is expected to draw widespread interest among Major League Baseball teams this winter. Murakami’s 45-day window to sign will start tomorrow, sources said, ensuring he will sign with a big league team before Christmas.<\/p>\n
Murakami, who also can play first base, is one of the jewels of a deep class of players expected to come from Asia this winter. Others expected to join MLB teams through the posting system — which facilitates the transfer of players whose rights team still control from Japan and Korea to MLB — and international free agency include right-hander Tatsuya Imai, first baseman Kazuma Okamoto and right-hander Kona Takahashi. Also expected to return to MLB are right-hander Cody Ponce<\/a>, who went 17-1 with a 1.89 ERA in the Korea Baseball Organization, and left-handers Foster Griffin<\/a> and Anthony Kay<\/a>, both of whom pitched in Japan.<\/p>\n A left-handed hitter, Murakami played in just 56 games this year due to an oblique injury but nonetheless whacked 22 home runs with a .273\/.379\/.663 slash line. While concerns over his propensity to strikeout, and particularly his in-zone swing-and-miss rate, will give teams pause, Murakami’s age and upside are both tantalizing enough that his free agency is expected to turn into a frenzy.<\/p>\n The addition of Japanese players has fueled the last two championships, with Shohei Ohtani<\/a> and Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a> leading the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> to World Series victories. Los Angeles guaranteed more than $1 billion to sign Ohtani as a free agent and pluck Yamamoto from the Orix Buffaloes through the posting system.<\/p>\n MLB teams that sign players through posting must pay a fee to the Asian team from which the player transfers: 20% for the first $25 million, 17.5% for the next $25 million and an additional 15% on every dollar above $50 million.<\/p>\n Murakami is widely expected to fetch a nine-figure deal, with a posting fee of at least $16.9 million on top of it. High-ranking MLB executives scouted multiple games of Murakami this season and emerged impressed, according to sources. In his eight seasons with the Swallows following his debut as an 18-year-old, Murakami hit .270\/.394\/.557 with a walk rate of greater than 16% and a strikeout rate nearing 26%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japanese star third baseman Munetaka Murakami will enter the posting system today, officially starting the process of one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-277478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}