SACRAMENTO, California – Chicago White Sox rookie Munetaka Murakami homered for the third straight game in Sunday’s 7-4 win against the Athletics, achieving the feat for the second time in his brief Major League Baseball career.<\/p>\n
The Samurai Japan slugger, who cleared the fences in his first three MLB regular-season games, took his home run tally to eight with a two-run blast in the fifth inning at Sutter Health Park.<\/p>\n
With one on and none out, Murakami sent a deep fly an estimated 425 feet (130 meters) out to right field, breaking the rubber game open at 6-1.<\/p>\n
“I’m really happy that it led to a win,” he said. “I think the most important thing is to keep following my routine and give thought to my hitting every day.”<\/p>\n
The former Triple Crown winner with the Yakult Swallows crushed his first MLB grand slam in Friday’s series opener and followed with a solo bomb on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Murakami’s eight home runs in his first 22 games are the most by any Japanese-born player, according to MLB.com. Two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani had five in his first 22 outings.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in MLB, fellow Japanese rookie Kazuma Okamoto launched his third home run for the Toronto Blue Jays as they snapped their four-game skid with a 10-4 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
Okamoto’s solo homer in the top of the third at Chase Field was part of a 2-for-4 outing with three RBIs. He also drove in two runs with a bases-loaded double in the top of the first.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t perfectly on the sweet spot, but I hit it solidly,” Okamoto said of his homer. “I hope this will be a good starting point. I want to work hard to hit as many more as possible from here on out.”<\/p>\n
At Coors Field, Ohtani extended his on-base streak to 51 games for the Los Angeles Dodgers in their 9-6 loss to the Colorado Rockies.<\/p>\n
The four-time MVP went 2-for-5 with an RBI and has now reached base every time he has been in the lineup dating back to Aug. 24, 2025.<\/p>\n
Roki Sasaki got the start but did not factor in the decision after giving up three runs on seven hits over 4-2\/3 innings. The 24-year-old right-hander is still looking for his first win of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO, California – Chicago White Sox rookie Munetaka Murakami homered for the third straight game in Sunday’s 7-4…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[5,138,49,2561,4,396,2562],"class_list":{"0":"post-679643","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\/116435911778231047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679643","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=679643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}