Over the past few years Munetaka Murakami has posted video game numbers in Japan, and according to multiple reports the 25-year-old slugger is officially on his way to MLB.

According to MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand and others, Murakami has been posted by his Nippon Professional Baseball club, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, and his official negotiating window will open on Saturday at 8 a.m. Murakami will have until Dec. 22 to agree to a deal with a big league club, and if he hasn’t signed by the end of that 45-day window he will return to the Swallows.

Murakami immediately becomes one of the most intriguing bats on the market, one who could potentially be a great fit in Boston.

Since debuting in NPB as an 18-year-old in 2018, Murakami has ranked among the most prolific power hitters in Japanese baseball history. He has already hit 246 home runs in eight professional seasons, and in 2022 he hit 56 homers as a 22-year-old, breaking Sadaharu Oh’s 58-year-old record for most homers in a single season by a Japanese-born player.

While Murakami has primarily played third base, the expectation is he will play first in the majors.

Murakami’s prolific power has obvious appeal for the Red Sox, who struggled to hit the ball out of the park by season’s end and who have made no secret their desire to improve in that area. Murakami is also much younger than Pete Alonso and Kyle Schwarber, the two top power hitters on the market who are each already in their early 30s.

The slugger has some notable downsides, too.

While the Red Sox ideally would like to add more right-handed power, Murakami bats left-handed like many of the club’s incumbent hitters. He is also the same age as Triston Casas, and given that both are left-handed hitting first basemen it would make no sense to have both on the roster together.

Signing Murakami would almost certainly foretell a Casas trade, which would be risky given that if Casas stays healthy he could potentially become an even better power hitter at a fraction of the cost over the next three years.

Murakami also strikes out a lot. Over his last two seasons Murakami has struck out 244 times in 834 at bats, which equates to a 29.2% strikeout rate. To put that in context, the MLB average is 22.6%, so Murakami could have a hard time handling big league pitching when he initially makes the jump.

Either way, Murakami is the most talented power hitter to come out of Japan since Hideki Matsui more than 20 years ago, and he’ll be a name for Red Sox fans to keep an eye out for in the coming weeks.