![\"Munetaka](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/munetaka-murakami-chicago-white-sox.jpg\")
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(Photo by John Fisher\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The Milwaukee Brewers<\/a> swept the Chicago White Sox<\/a> to open up the 2026 MLB season. However, Chicago has arguably the most intriguing rookie of the campaign in Munetaka Murakami, who hit a home run in each of those three games. <\/p>\n After there was concern this offseason over how his bat would translate from the Nippon Professional Baseball to the major leagues, Murakami is making those issues look silly so far. <\/p>\n While it\u2019s a confidence boost for the 26-year-old to be having early success, MLB<\/a> insider Ken Rosenthal believes that major league pitching will adjust to the White Sox slugger, and it will be up to him to adjust to sustain this success over the rest of the season. <\/p>\n \u201cHe had three homers in three games against the Brewers,\u201d Rosenthal said on the March edition of \u201cFair Territory.\u201d<\/a> \u201cYou want to see it play out. We are in the small\u2011sample overreaction phase of the season, the opening week. But again, it\u2019s very encouraging, and there\u2019s no question he has power. That was not a question coming over from Japan. <\/p>\n \u201cSo the question will be, as major\u2011league pitchers adjust to him, how will he adjust in kind and whether he will be able to sustain \u2014 not a 162\u2011homer, 162\u2011game performance, but a level that is comparable to what he was able to do in Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n White Sox\u2019s Munetaka Murakami Joins a Select Group After Hot Start<\/p>\n Murakami became just the fourth player in MLB history to hit a home run in each of his first three career games. He joins a select group that includes Chase DeLauter (2026), Kyle Lewis (2019), and Trevor Story (2016), per ESPN Insight<\/a>. <\/p>\n Furthermore, Rosenthal didn\u2019t skip over the concerns teams had about Murakami, which is why the White Sox were able to jump in and land the Japanese standout to a two-year contract. <\/p>\n \u201cAt the start of the offseason, the predictions for Murakami in free agency turned out to be much higher than what he actually got from the White Sox, and there were some questions about swing\u2011and\u2011miss, questions about defense, and questions, as they always are, about Japanese players adapting to major league pitching. Well, so far, so good.\u201d<\/p>\n Munetaka Murakami Is Also Taking His Walks at the Plate<\/p>\n Murakami isn\u2019t just slugging in these first three games with Chicago; he\u2019s hitting for average and taking his walks. The White Sox\u2019s emerging star has a .333 batting average with four walks, three homers, three RBIs, and four runs scored in three games, per StatMuse<\/a>. <\/p>\n Nonetheless, the individual success hasn\u2019t translated into team success, as the White Sox lost all three games in which Murakami hit a home run against the Brewers. <\/p>\n Chicago will look to get into the win column for the first time this season as their road trip continues against the Miami Marlins<\/a> in a three-game set from March 30 to April 1. After six games on the road to start this campaign, the White Sox will head home for their opener against the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> beginning on April 2.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tEduardo Razo<\/a> Eduardo Razo is a sports writer for Heavy.com, covering the NFL, MLB, and college football. He has previously covered the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB for NBC Sports Washington and NBC Sports Bay Area & California, and has freelanced for PSG Talk, covering Paris Saint-Germain. He also worked as an editor at Athlon Sports, focusing on MLB and the NFL. More about Eduardo Razo<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tMore Heavy on White Sox\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tLoading more stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty (Photo by John Fisher\/Getty Images) The Milwaukee Brewers swept the Chicago White Sox to open up the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2379],"tags":[5,138,49,2561,4,396,2562],"class_list":{"0":"post-653482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-white-sox","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-white-sox","11":"tag-chicagowhitesox","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-white-sox","14":"tag-whitesox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116320859638241300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653482","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=653482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}