Munetaka Murakami’s free agency sparks Shohei Ohtani comparisons inside MLB circles

Munetaka Murakami’s free agency is not unfolding the way most star hitters expect. There is no steady buzz around his name. No clear list of teams. No sense of urgency. Instead, front offices are watching from a distance, studying the same numbers, and arriving at very different conclusions.

Murakami’s talent is not the question. His power has been proven for years in Japan. What teams are trying to decide now is whether that power will matter more than the swing-and-miss that comes with it. That uncertainty has slowed everything down and turned his market into one of the hardest to read this offseason.

Munetaka Murakami free agency shows how MLB teams view power and risk

In NPB, Murakami built his reputation as a hitter pitchers feared. Thirty home runs became routine. Mistakes were punished. His raw strength ranks among the best scouts have seen come out of Japan, and that part of his profile translates easily on paper.

The concern sits elsewhere. From 2023 through 2025, Murakami struck out in roughly 28 to 29 percent of his plate appearances. That rate is unusually high for Japan, where contact is emphasized and strikeouts are less common. Even by MLB standards, it places him in a range teams approach carefully. Power can be game-changing, but swing-and-miss limits margin for error. MLB insider Ken Rosenthal described why Murakami’s market has remained so quiet.

“He’s the biggest mystery on the market because we don’t hear, or haven’t heard, many teams involved," Rosenthal said. "That doesn’t mean there aren’t teams involved; we just don’t know where this is right now. And sometimes these negotiations with Japanese players, and other players too, you just don’t hear much about the teams involved. We frankly haven’t heard much about Okamoto or Imai either in terms of teams."

Rosenthal also addressed why Shohei Ohtani keeps coming up in these conversations, particularly when strikeouts are mentioned. "Murakami is a guy has 80 power, but there are serious concerns about the swing-and-miss tendencies. Now, I wrote in my notes column that Ohtani’s ages 18-to-22 seasons had an even higher strikeout rate in Japan than Murakami has in his career. But if you look at Seiya Suzuki, his strikeout rate in Japan was much lower than Murakami’s, and he has been a successful major league hitter. So Murakami is something of a boom-or-bust guy, at least in the eyes of clubs."

That description explains the pause. Some teams see a potential middle-of-the-order bat. Others see a profile that may struggle to adjust against top-level pitching. Until one side becomes more convincing, Murakami’s free agency will remain quiet, cautious, and closely watched.

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