Is Munetaka Murakami, the Babe Ruth of Higo, Really Worth the Hype?

Major League Baseball clubs that will be in the market for high-priced power this winter got good news on Friday, as there will be another major option alongside Kyle Schwarber, Kyle Tucker and Pete Alonso on the free-agent market.

Here comes Munetaka Murakami—at least according to Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, who reported that the slugger is expected to be posted by the NPB's Yakult Swallows.

Known as the "Babe Ruth of Higo" as a nod to his hometown, Murakami has been terrorizing NPB pitchers for the last eight years. He's slugged 265 home runs in 1,003 games, with a high of 56 in 2022 that set an NPB record for a Japanese-born player.

And here's the cherry on top: Murakami is still just 25 years old, meaning that whoever lands him can expect to get a good chunk of his prime years.

The most that any team has spent on a position player out of Japan was the $113 million that the San Francisco Giants committed to Jung Hoo Lee in 2023. Murakami could clear that easily, and that isn't even counting the posting fee his new team will have to pay to Yakult.

The only question, then, is whether Murakami is truly worth this much hype.

Murakami's Power Is the Real Deal

If there is anything universally agreed upon when it comes to Murakami, it's that all the home runs he's hit are truly indicative of the kind of power he's packing.

He's sturdily built at 6'2", 213 pounds, and Merrill Kelly is an MLB pitcher who knows from experience that Murakami can put a charge into the ball. The home run he surrendered to the slugger in the 2023 World Baseball Classic was 115.1 mph off the bat and traveled 432 feet.

As luck would have it, the NPB just released an official app that allows for access to some of Murakami's metrics for the 2025 NPB season. Thanks to MLB reporter Michael Marino, we know these to include:

To put these in perspective, 116.5 mph is harder than any ball that Pete Alonso hit this year, while 440 feet matches Brent Rooker's longest homer. Murakami's hard-hit and barrel rates are roughly the equivalent of what Shohei Ohtani did in both departments.

If your eyes glaze over when confronted with numbers like these, you'll want to pay attention to the upcoming mic drop: Murakami averaged one home run for every 9.2 at-bats in 2025, which is even better than Cal Raleigh (9.9) did en route to his 60 homers.

Here's What Could Hold Murakami Back in MLB

Add in the fact that Murakami nearly doubled the NPB average with a 14.3 walk percentage, and he ultimately checks the two big boxes for a prototypical MLB slugger.

Yet he unfortunately also does so in negative ways, starting with how he is of questionable value in the field. He's a primary third baseman who has also seen time at first base, and his metrics back up the generally held view that he's a below-average defender. Per the NPB batter profile app, he was in the 18th percentile with his Total Zone Rating in 2025.

Even more alarming, here's how Murakami's strikeout rates have trended since his first full season in 2019:

He was trending in the right direction but has regressed over the last three years. And this is in a league where the average strikeout rate was just 18.4 in 2025, putting Murakami in the third percentile with his 28.6 K%.

Even if Murakami had managed the exact same strikeout rate in the majors, he would have ranked ninth among qualified hitters. And because the league-wide K% in the majors was 22.2 percent this year, the natural fear is that Murakami's strikeout rate would have landed somewhere in the 30s.

Granted, some batters can pull off a high strikeout rate and still be productive because of their power. But for every James Wood, Mike Trout, Riley Greene and Eugenio Suárez, there's a Ryan McMahon, Oneil Cruz, Jordan Beck, Matt McLain and Lawrence Butler.

Though they didn't affect his power, Murakami also had issues with injuries in 2025. He played in just 69 games after having offseason elbow surgery and then running into a series of upper-body injuries. At one point, there were reports of him considering postponing his MLB posting to 2027.

Murakami Is Going to Get Paid No Matter What

None of the above is going to be lost on whichever MLB teams get involved in the bidding for Murakami, and it's a near-certainty that even his flaws won't be an anchor on his price tag.

In September, ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote that the "ceiling" for Murakami's MLB deal could be even higher than that of his countryman, right-hander Tatsuya Imai. And for that, one MLB official ballparked Imai's price at "upward of $200 million."

If it sounds like a lot for a guy who seems to be one-dimensional, well, that is fair. Murakami gives off Kyle Schwarber vibes. Even his successful run with the Philadelphia Phillies on a four-year, $79 million contract only returned $91 million in value. Even if you double that over an eight-year span, you're still not at $200 million.

However, the appeal with Murakami is as much about the downstream value of his power—and we're not even talking about his potential as a marketing juggernaut, a la what Shohei Ohtani is for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In today's MLB, there's a strong correlation between hitting home runs and winning games. Of the 12 teams that made the playoffs, seven topped the league average of 188 home runs. Of the five that didn't, only the Milwaukee Brewers are still standing.

Because he makes it possible to imagine seasons of 40-to-50 home runs on an annual basis for the foreseeable future, Murakami is the kind of guy who would-be World Series winners should want on their side. And some apparently already do, as Feinsand cited a report from Nikkan Sports that the Phillies, Seattle Mariners and both New York clubs are among the potential suitors for Murakami.

We should only be a couple of months away from finding out where Murakami will call home in MLB. Wherever it is, the potential rewards are going to outweigh the potential risks.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.