{"id":679933,"date":"2026-04-20T19:12:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T19:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/679933\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T19:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T19:12:27","slug":"munetaka-murakami-concerns-turned-into-34-million-white-sox-bargain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/679933\/","title":{"rendered":"Munetaka Murakami ‘concerns’ turned into $34 million White Sox bargain"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chicago White Sox<\/a> took a chance on Munetaka Murakami, and it’s paying off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Twenty-nine other organizations passed on the slugger from Nippon Professional Baseball during the offseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Murakami’s projected contract surpassed $100 million, but he settled for a two-year, $34 million deal with the White Sox. Bleacher Report’s Tim Kelly <\/a>wrote Monday that other MLB teams seemed to have the wrong scouting report on the first baseman\/designated hitter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Concerns about his ability to hit velocity and limited defensive flexibility led to Munetaka Murakami’s market cratering this past offseason,” Kelly wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the weekend, Murakami homered in all three games<\/a> of Chicago’s series against the Athletics<\/a>. He launched a grand slam and finished 3-for-5 at the plate on Friday. Murakami’s eight home runs rank him in a tie for third place with Ben Rice and Jordan Walker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More:\u00a0Shohei Ohtani deemed more valuable than Aaron Judge in recent ESPN discussion piece<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s a small sample size of 72 at-bats, and swing and miss concerns remain, but it may be in the White Sox’s best interest to lock him up long-term sooner rather than later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If the White Sox are smart, they’ll move pretty quickly to extend the 26-year-old, who will be a coveted free agent if he continues to deliver this type of power production and reaches the open market after the 2027 season,” Kelly added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago White Sox took a chance on Munetaka Murakami, and it’s paying off.\u00a0 Twenty-nine other organizations passed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653063,"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-679933","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\/116438626693105732","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679933","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=679933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679933\/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=679933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}