{"id":668974,"date":"2026-04-07T19:30:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T19:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/668974\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T19:30:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T19:30:26","slug":"munetaka-murakamis-hot-start-for-white-sox-isnt-a-fluke-for-2-reasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/668974\/","title":{"rendered":"Munetaka Murakami’s hot start for White Sox isn’t a fluke for 2 reasons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chicago White Sox<\/a> made a huge move this offseason, being the team to sign Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami on a very reasonable $34 million contract.<\/p>\n

So far this season, he’s been great, hitting only .206, but with four home runs and a .892 OPS. The White Sox slugger is off to a hot start, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see some fans wondering if this is a fluky start to 2026 for Murakami.<\/p>\n

But, as MLB.com’s Mike Petriello<\/a> found, there are two reasons why Murakami’s start to 2026 isn’t a fluke, but rather the norm going forward.<\/p>\n

Munetaka Murakami’s hot start is not a fluke for 2 reasons<\/p>\n

“Likely good news for: Believing in J. Walker’s breakout, C. Walker’s rebound, or Murakami’s adjustment,” Petriello writes.<\/p>\n

What Petriello is referring to is two statistics that Murakami is placing well in, with bat speed being one, but the more important being his Blast rate on swings.<\/p>\n

“Blasts” refer to when a hitter squares up a baseball with a fast bat swing, and with Murakami’s average swing speed being 74 mph, he’s more than capable of reaching that threshold on his swings.<\/p>\n

According to Baseball Savant<\/a>, Murakami’s “Swing percentage” for Blasts is a strong 19.0%, which is tied for 14th best in all of Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n

More:\u00a0Mets didn<\/a>\u2019t want to trade Brett Baty while White Sox didn<\/a>\u2019t want Mark Vientos in Luis Robert Jr. trade<\/a><\/p>\n

Put another way, on 19% of Murakami’s swings this season, he squares up the baseball and makes hard contact with a fast swing.<\/p>\n

Those kinds of swings will lead to home runs, as seen by his four-homer start to the season. He’s been one of the best hitters in the Majors, and Petriello found that those are statistics that lead to success over the course of a full season.<\/p>\n

Murakami has been one of the more fun hitters in the Majors to begin the season, and this hot start doesn’t look like a fluke for the White Sox slugger.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago White Sox made a huge move this offseason, being the team to sign Japanese slugger Munetaka…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653063,"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-668974","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\/116365087529409062","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668974","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=668974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}