CHICAGO – Sometime after midnight on Dec. 20, 2025, as Friday turned into Saturday and hours before the Bears beat the Packers in overtime, White Sox general manager Chris Getz finished the latest Zoom he has been a part of since joining the organization.
It was centered upon Japanese standout free agent Munetaka Murakami and his representatives from Excel Sports Management, as the White Sox reached the final stage of adding this potential impact player to their burgeoning rebuild. When that Zoom concluded, Getz called White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
“I said, ‘We got him.’ And he was excited. I was excited,” Getz said. “Just started notifying everyone I could. Jerry was the first person I talked to. I talked to [executive vice president] Brooks [Boyer] as well.
“We debriefed the following morning. It was one of those, ‘Did that really just happen? What happened last night?’”
At 25, Murakami instantly moves into the youthful White Sox core. He also provides a legitimate power threat hitting left-handed, while opening the Pacific Rim for the White Sox in terms of player acquisition and overall attention. The two-year contract gives Murakami a chance to prove his Major League value and then potentially enter free agency again at 27.
Getz recently broke down how this deal came about during an extended interview with MLB.com. It started with a stronger investment on the international side as David Keller, who oversees the White Sox international scouting, spent time in Japan, with Satoshi Takahashi as a scout on the ground floor there for the White Sox.
Months ago, while the ’25 season was still going, Getz and Keller spoke of the talent available this offseason from Japan. They landed on the benefits and ensuing challenges Murakami could have with the White Sox.
“Candidly, I didn’t think it was going to be a realistic target for us. I didn’t,” Getz said. “The speculation was big, whether it be years, and dollars. There was a lot of attention on what type of impact he was going to have in free agency this offseason.
“We did our due diligence. But I still didn’t feel like it was going to be realistic, even into when free agency opened up.”
Even at the ’25 Winter Meetings in Orlando, Fla., Getz still didn’t think the White Sox had a true shot. The White Sox continued to look for first base options via free agency, which would have changed the Murakami equation, but Getz admitted to MLB.com nothing was ever close.
It wasn’t until the last week leading into Murakami’s 45-day posting window expiring at 4 p.m. CT on Dec. 22 when Getz felt greater confidence. That previously described post-Zoom jubilation quickly turned into getting the myriad details done before the posting date. Getz used some outside connections to speed up matters with Murakami arriving that Saturday from Los Angeles.
“You’ve usually got a little bit more time to work out when a player is coming in, setting up an MRI machine. We were up against it,” Getz said. “I actually called a friend of mine that is connected to a hospital and was able to get [Murakami] in in a timely manner to be able to not only get him in, get him through, but also so we could read the MRIs.
“We were racing against time. These were unique circumstances where I had to step outside of my normal signing process and lean on some of my network to get it to the finish line.”
Getz has the requisite knowledge of where the payroll is going to be every offseason and then figures out how to spend that money. It could be adding Anthony Kay or Sean Newcomb, two free agent pitchers who joined the White Sox.
With Murakami being “a bigger dollar deal” as Getz pointed out, he wanted to have a stronger understanding of how it could affect the business side. Getz spoke to Boyer, who also is the chief revenue/marketing officer, giving him more big-picture confidence when talking with Reinsdorf. Boyer spoke to Reinsdorf as well.
“I very much tried to have adopted an ‘apply the systems’ thinking. We’ve done it on the baseball side the last two years,” Getz said. “I think a simple way to describe systems thinking is, we’ve got our baseball continuum, the identification process, the acquisition, and player development, managing the roster, game management. Going out and competing and winning.
“But I describe that knowing everything is interconnected. There isn’t one bucket of our baseball continuum that doesn’t influence the other. The same thing could be said about the organization as a whole, including the business side.”
“When you sign players, what could be the impact on the business side and utilizing our accounting side, the marketing side, the PR side into a player like this,” Getz added. “It just gave us an extra level of motivation to go to Jerry and explain our thought process and being able to go out and execute.”
Both the White Sox and Murakami’s side had an honest and straightforward conversation on Thursday, Dec. 18, but Getz had a speaking engagement Friday afternoon, committed to months ago, leaving him out of pocket for a few hours. Talks picked up again Friday evening, leading to the Zoom on Friday night.
Manager Will Venable was in New York on vacation with his family. But the Murakami news was worth a few less hours of sleep.
“Got a phone call from Getzie there was some action and a heads up, and before I knew it, we had signed him,” Venable said. “It happened really quickly on my end, but obviously very happy that it ended with us getting Mune.”
“So, we just view this as truly upside,” Getz said. “The baseball side, the business side. There’s a big impact and it’s leading to things that perhaps we didn’t even anticipate, quite honestly.”
