{"id":506416,"date":"2026-01-05T15:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T15:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/506416\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T15:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T15:52:12","slug":"murakami-alone-wouldnt-have-saved-the-white-sox-from-100-losses-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/506416\/","title":{"rendered":"Murakami alone wouldn\u2019t have saved the White Sox from 100 losses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some say Pope Leo XIV blessed the White Sox with a miracle when Japanese phenom Munetaka Murakami signed with Chicago, but this underperforming team needs more than a miracle to crawl back to a winning record.<\/p>\n

Murakami\u2019s standout power and accolades bring hope to a team that struggled to put the ball over the fence in 2025. Chicago\u2019s .373 slugging percentage and .675 OPS ranked third-worst among all 30 teams and well below league averages (.404 and .719). Across the pond, Murakami was a slugging machine in his 69 games, delivering a .659 slugging percentage and 1.051 OPS.<\/p>\n

Based on the power Murakami produced from a season shortened by an oblique injury, would his performance have helped the Sox win more than 60 games?<\/p>\n

To understand Murakami\u2019s impact on the Sox last season, I calculated the expected number of wins for the Sox with him on the team in place of Andrew Vaughn. I did this by swapping Murakami\u2019s performance on the Yakult Swallows with Vaughn\u2019s while on the Sox. I used Vaughn as the replacement player for several reasons. First, Murakami is expected to be the Opening Day first baseman in 2026, and he would\u2019ve easily gotten the starting job at first in 2025 had he been with the Sox. Second, Vaughn played more games at first base than anyone else on the team. With Murakami slotted as the starting first baseman in the depth chart, it\u2019s logical to assume he would\u2019ve played a similar proportion of games at first.<\/p>\n

\"Percentage<\/a><\/p>\n

Percentage of White Sox first base appearances throughout 2025.<\/p>\n

Finally, Vaughn was not instrumental to the Sox. With his .189\/.218\/.314 slash line and a .217 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), Vaughn had fans tearing their hair out each time he came to the plate. Even if Vaughn got the starts out of the gate in 2025 due to tenure, anyone would\u2019ve replaced him with Murakami by mid-April had the two been teammates.<\/p>\n

The first step in this analysis was measuring Vaughn\u2019s contribution to the Sox by calculating his runs per plate appearance (RPA). I only used Vaughn\u2019s stats while in Chicago, and tied his performance to the team by calibrating Vaughn\u2019s OPS against the team\u2019s average OPS. This allowed me to replace him with Murakami.<\/p>\n

AV\u2019s RPA = AV\u2019s PAs x (Total Sox Rs \/ Total Sox PAs) x (AV\u2019s OPS \/ Sox Avg OPS), thus
AV\u2019s RPA = 193 x (647 \/ 5,987) x (.531 \/ .719) = 29.69<\/p>\n

Next, I calculated Murakami\u2019s RPA, which required translating Murakami\u2019s NPB performance to MLB. NPB and MLB aren\u2019t equivalent in terms of difficulty; baseball analysts have observed that the NPB\u2019s competition level is comparable to Triple-A<\/a>. Japanese hitters have struggled adjusting to MLB-caliber pitching, which has resulted in 22% lower on-base percentages and 25% lower slugging percentages on average, when moving from Japan to the U.S. I used an estimated rate of decline from Jordan Rosenblum\u2019s FanGraphs article<\/a>, where he measured the decline in wrC+ and OPS among Japanese players transitioning from NPB to MLB since 2000.<\/p>\n

To accommodate the difference between NPB and MLB, I lowered Murakami\u2019s OBP and SLG by 22% and 25%, as exhibited by the 0.22 and 0.25 multipliers in the table below. I also added a regression towards the mean MLB on-base and slugging percentages for the 2025 season. Because Murakami\u2019s translated MLB stats still don\u2019t capture his true MLB potential, I regressed his stats by 10% towards the Sox\u2019s mean performance, which factors in Murakami\u2019s performance against the few games he played and provides a conservative estimate of his hypothetical impact on the Sox.<\/p>\n

\"Translation<\/a><\/p>\n

Translation of Munetaka Murakami\u2019s stats from NPB to MLB.<\/p>\n

With a fair estimate of his MLB performance, I calculated Murakami\u2019s RPA to be 24.33, nearly five runs lower than Vaughn\u2019s RPA.<\/p>\n

The final step was calculating the expected number of wins for the Sox with Vaughn and Murakami in the lineup using Pythagorean winning percentage<\/a>. I did this by projecting the number of runs scored using either player\u2019s RPA, and I assumed Sox pitchers allowed the same number of runs with either player in the lineup. The results were surprising.<\/p>\n

\"White<\/a><\/p>\n

White Sox expected runs scored and games won in 2025 with Andrew Vaughn vs. Munetaka Murakami at first base.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Sox were projected to win one more game and score more runs with Vaughn in the lineup than Murakami.<\/p>\n

The analysis didn\u2019t factor in potential performance improvements due to player development, and should be interpreted as Murakami\u2019s expected run production in a vacuum.<\/p>\n

Digging into this analysis, there are several key takeaways.<\/p>\n

Murakami alone can\u2019t transform the Sox. Although obvious to any baseball fan, emotions can make it easy to forget that one signing on its own doesn\u2019t turn a franchise around when emotions take over. It\u2019s also unlikely that Murakami will wallop more than 30 home runs and slug better than .550 in his first MLB season. Given the historical challenges Japanese players have faced when adjusting to more difficult pitching, Murakami\u2019s NPB stats shouldn\u2019t be taken at face value. Sox fans should be excited that he picked Chicago to call home for the next two years, but inflated expectations of his debut season will only crush morale for fans of a team that\u2019s finally digging itself out of the trenches. For Murakami to adapt to MLB pitching, the Sox coaching staff must be able to develop his swing and improve his swing decisions.<\/p>\n

Also remember, the Sox didn\u2019t play to their potential \u2014 that\u2019s why in the table above their win pace was 71 even with the disappointing Vaughn in the lineup. Chicago fell 10 games short of its expected win total, and the reason is that math can\u2019t account for human factors of the game. The Pythagorean expectation doesn\u2019t account for an unstable bullpen, a godawful offense in the season\u2019s first half, the lineup enduring rookie pains at least once during the season or Luis Robert Jr. not being able to handle carrying the team (indicated by his sub-.200 batting average from April-June). Ultimately, with a 15-36 record in one-run games, the Sox couldn\u2019t make the big outs or get the big hits when needed.<\/p>\n

As Chris Getz and company point toward 81 wins, they must remember that there\u2019s a difference between building a team that can win and a team that does win. The Sox are the former, and they need more than just Murakami\u2019s bat in the lineup to become the latter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some say Pope Leo XIV blessed the White Sox with a miracle when Japanese phenom Munetaka Murakami signed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[1749,5,138,49,39268,31244,2561,4,73,396,2562],"class_list":{"0":"post-506416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-white-sox","8":"tag-andrew-vaughn","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-white-sox","12":"tag-chicago-white-sox-commentary-analysis","13":"tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","14":"tag-chicagowhitesox","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-munetaka-murakami","17":"tag-white-sox","18":"tag-whitesox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115843297860918836","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}