Roki Sasaki is doing his part to help the Dodgers in their quest for a second straight World Series title, but the next Japanese star could be on his way to the Majors in the coming months.
According to sources, Munetaka Murakami — a slugging corner infielder for the Yakult Swallows of the Central League in Nippon Professional Baseball — will be posted this winter, making him available to all 30 big league clubs.
Murakami’s move to the Majors has been expected for months. Yahoo Sports Japan reported last December that Murakami announced that 2025 would be his final season in the NPB, while Yakult team president and acting owner Tetsuya Hayashida told multiple Japanese media outlets in June that the club is “willing” to post the two-time Central League Most Valuable Player and four-time All-Star.
“Our hope is for him to succeed,” Hayashida said. “He supported the team so much in such a short period and made a big contribution. He’s a player we care a lot about.”
Murakami has played about 75 percent of his games at third base, with the other 25 percent coming at first base. Listed at 6-foot-2, 213 pounds, he has 246 home runs in 892 games, including a 56-homer season in 2022, the most hit in a single season by a Japanese-born player. The left-handed slugger also won the Triple Crown that year at the age of 22, becoming the youngest player in league history to accomplish that feat.
“He has legit power,” said one scout who has watched Murakami multiple times. “It should translate to the Majors.”
What that means, exactly, remains to be seen. Hideki Matsui hit 332 home runs in 10 seasons in Japan — including 50 home runs in 2002 — before joining the Yankees in 2003, but he hit 30 homers only once and reached the 20-homer mark four other times in his 10 years in the Majors.
Nikkan Sports reported this week that the Yankees, Mets, Phillies and Mariners are among the teams that could make a big push for Murakami, who hit 22 home runs with 47 RBIs and a 1.043 OPS in 56 games during an injury-shortened 2025 campaign, flashing the type of power he showed in his 56-homer season. Sources say the Dodgers, Giants and Red Sox could also be in the mix, though much of it will depend on how each team views his ability to play first and/or third, or his willingness to be a designated hitter.
The Mets could face the loss of Pete Alonso, who is opting out of his contract, so president of baseball operations David Stearns went to Japan in August to see Murakami, who hit a walk-off home run with Stearns in attendance. The Dodgers could look to move on from Max Muncy at third base, while the Mariners could lose both first baseman Josh Naylor and third baseman Eugenio Suárez to free agency.
The Phillies could slot Murakami in as a DH to replace Kyle Schwarber (who is also set to be a free agent), move Bryce Harper back to the outfield to open first base or possibly trade third baseman Alec Bohm, who is entering his final year of arbitration. The Red Sox could use Murakami at first base, or if Alex Bregman opts out and signs elsewhere, they would have a vacancy at third base. The Giants, who have Matt Chapman at third base and Rafael Devers at DH, could use Murakami at first base.
If there’s a potential red flag for Major League teams, it’s Murakami’s strikeout rate, which has risen significantly over the past three seasons. He whiffed in more than 30 percent of his at-bats during his first two seasons, but he lowered that rate between 20.9 and 22.3 percent from 2020-22. The past three seasons, that rate has increased again between 28.1 and 29.5 percent, including 180 strikeouts in 610 plate appearances in 2024.
Also of concern is Murakami’s walk rate, which has dipped from a career-high 19.3 percent in his monster 2022 season to 14.3 percent this past year. Murakami owns a .394 career on-base percentage, though it has decreased into the .370s in each of the past three seasons after he posted numbers between .408 and .458 from 2020-22.
“The strikeout and walk numbers may scare some teams away,” an American League executive said. “He has big power, but there appear to be a lot of holes in that swing.”
Murakami turned 25 in February, so he won’t be limited to international bonus pool money the way Sasaki was last offseason. Players who are at least 25 and have played as a professional in a foreign league recognized by Major League Baseball for a minimum of six seasons are exempt from those restrictions. NPB players are not eligible for unrestricted free agency until they have played nine seasons, so Murakami must be posted by Yakult if he wants to make the move to MLB.
The top contracts for Japanese position players have gone to Masataka Yoshida (five years, $90 million in December 2022) and Seiya Suzuki (five years, $85 million in March 2022), while Jung Hoo Lee — who starred in Korea’s KBO League for seven years — received a five-year, $113 million deal from the Giants prior to the 2024 season. None of those players possessed Murakami’s power, which hasn’t been seen by a player making the jump from NPB to MLB since Matsui more than two decades ago (or Shohei Ohtani, who was an international amateur player when he signed with the Angels ahead of the 2018 season).
There will be some big names on the corner-infield/DH market this winter — Schwarber, Suárez and Naylor will be free agents, while Alonso and Bregman are expected to opt out of their deals — so while Murakami is something of an unknown quantity, he could become an alternative for clubs that find the asking price on the established MLB players too high.
