10:15 a.m. ET: After the early morning note of the Red Sox’ reported interest, Murakami is signing a two-year with the Chicago White Sox, just as ESPN MLB Insider Buster Olney indicated he’d like to see. (see below).

Jeff Passan of ESPN had the news of Murakami’s signing and the Red Sox will go back to the drawing board.

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Sunday a.m. ET: Japanese outlet LiveDoor News is reporting that the Boston Red Sox are one of the teams trying to negotiate a deal with NPB slugger Munetaka Murakami.

Murakami has until 5 p.m. ET on Monday, Dec. 22 to sign or he will go back to the NPB. The outlet, which has 2.1 million followers on “X” also names the Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Angels as teams trying to attract the powerful hitter.

Still just 25 years old, Murakami is the biggest enigma of this free agent class. He has age and power on his side, but there have been major questions about his ability to make contact, especially against high-velocity pitchers.

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He hit .318 in 2022 with 56 home runs for the Yokult Swallows, but he’s seen his average regress to .256 in 2023 and .244 in 2024. He hit .273 in 2025, but he only played 56 games because of injury.

He had 31 home runs in 2023 and 33 in 2024. He struck out 64 times in just 56 games this past season, an average of more than one strikeout per game. He still had 24 homers in that limited sample size.

Another issue for Murakami is that he doesn’t have a true defensive position. He can play first or third but isn’t seen as great at either. The Red Sox, in theory, have an opening at third base as they wait for Alex Bregman to make a decision, but they also have the ability to use Marcelo Mayer there.

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They could use Murakami at first, but they still have another left-hander in Triston Casas who is working back from injury. Could they really have two lefties that play first? As for designated hitter? The Red Sox have a glut at that position, including Masataka Yoshida and their rotating group of outfielders.

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Yoshida and Murakami were teammates on the 2023 Team Japan team that won the World Baseball Classic. That, plus a good heritage of Japanese players in the 2000s (Daisuke Matzuzaka, Koji Uehara, Hideki Okajima, Yoshida) could help give Boston a leg up.

With just over 24 hours to go, it’s still unclear what the overall deal may look like for Murakami, who was initially expected to get more than $100 million in free agency. ESPN’s Buster Olney said the following on the Refuse to Lose podcast, which is part of the MarinersRoundtable network.

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“I kind of blame the hype machine for that (for why we have’t heard much) because if you remember, at the beginning of the offseason, the talk was, ‘oh, he’s going to get a huge long-term deal.’ And then you drill down and you talk to teams and they’re like, ‘doesn’t really have a position, not a good defender, swings and misses a ton, would have to make a transition from Japan to facing major league pitching.’ And they had real concerns about him.

Like, I never have heard anything from any executive telling me that besides, ‘yeah, he’s got great power, but it’s a, it’s potential for all or nothing.’ And they were concerned about a guy coming over here and hitting .180 and potentially, if they gave him an everyday job, striking out 200 times. That’s not going to play.

And so I think it would have been a lot better if he had come with very little advance notice. Just come over, just sign a short-term deal. Great thing is he’s a free agent and he’s not subject to team control. So if he had signed, let’s say a two-year deal with some team, established himself, hit a ton of home runs with low expectations like the White Sox, then he could have hit the market again and could make a killing.

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But instead we’re having this conversation about all of his warts. I just, I don’t think this was handled very well.”

The outlet indicates that Murakami could take a shorter deal, as Olney referenced.

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