Munetaka Murakami Stats: 56 NPB Homers and a New MLB Rookie Record

Munetaka Murakami hit 246 home runs in eight seasons in Japan, including a 56-homer year that broke a record Sadaharu Oh had held since 1964. The question when the Chicago White Sox signed him was whether any of it would survive the move to MLB. Through Aug. 26 of his rookie season he has 29 home runs, the most ever by a Japanese player in his first MLB year, and his team is leading the AL Central.

Key Takeaways

• Murakami hit 246 home runs with a .270 average over 892 NPB games with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, winning one batting title, three home run crowns and two RBI titles.
• His 56 home runs in 2022 are the single-season record for a Japanese-born and Asian hitter, passing Oh’s 55 from 1964.
• That same season he won the Triple Crown at 22 years, 7 months — the youngest in NPB history.
• In MLB he homered in each of his first three games, made the All-Star team in July, and broke the Japanese rookie home run record — previously Shohei Ohtani’s 22 — in early August.
• Through Aug. 26 he is hitting .221 with 29 home runs and an .863 OPS. The batting average is a problem; 72 walks and a .507 slugging percentage are not.

Munetaka Murakami’s NPB Career Stats

Yakult made Murakami its first-round pick in the 2017 draft. The Kumamoto native had hit 52 home runs at Kyushu Gakuin High School and was billed alongside Kotaro Kiyomiya as one of the two best prep bats in the country — Kiyomiya in the east, Murakami in the west. Three clubs claimed him, and Yakult won the lottery over the Yomiuri Giants and Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

He spent most of his first pro season on the farm team, then homered in his first at-bat after a September call-up. In 2019, his second year, he played all 143 games and hit 36 home runs with 96 RBIs to win Central League Rookie of the Year.

Year	G	PA	AB	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG
2018	6	14	12	1	1	2	2	5	.083	.214	.333
2019	143	593	511	118	36	96	74	184	.231	.332	.481
2020	120	515	424	130	28	86	87	115	.307	.427	.585
2021	143	615	500	139	39	112	106	133	.278	.408	.566
2022	141	612	487	155	56	134	118	128	.318	.458	.710
2023	140	597	496	127	31	84	90	168	.256	.375	.500
2024	143	610	500	122	33	86	105	180	.244	.379	.472
2025	56	224	187	51	22	47	32	64	.273	.379	.663
Career	892	3780	3117	843	246	647	614	977	.270	.394	.557

Reaching 246 home runs and 647 RBIs across eight seasons before turning 26 is an extraordinary pace. His final NPB year was cut to 56 games by an oblique injury, but he hit 22 home runs after returning — the power was intact.

The Records That Made Him Famous

56 Home Runs: The Asian Single-Season Record

Murakami’s 56 home runs in 2022 are the most any Japanese-born or Asian hitter has managed in a season, breaking a 58-year-old record: Oh’s 55, set in 1964.

He was on pace from April. In June alone he drove in the winning run nine times, reportedly the most in a single month since NPB split into two leagues. From July 31 to Aug. 2 he homered in five consecutive plate appearances, which no player in Japanese pro baseball had ever done.

He reached 55 on Sept. 13 against the Giants, then stalled under the weight of it. The 56th came in the final game of the regular season.

The distribution says as much as the total. Murakami is left-handed, so right field is his pull side. He hit 25 to right, 13 to center and 18 the other way to left — a left-handed hitter putting 31 of 56 home runs, roughly 55%, in center field or the opposite field.

The Youngest Triple Crown in NPB History

The 2022 line was .318 with 56 home runs and 134 RBIs: the Triple Crown, at 22 years and 7 months, the youngest anyone has done it in Japan. It was also the first Triple Crown of the Reiwa era, which began in 2019.

Winning it means leading the league in average, home runs and RBIs at once, and it almost never happens — the previous Japanese Triple Crown was Nobuhiko Matsunaka’s in 2004, 18 years earlier.

Murakami did not win narrowly. He finished 26 home runs clear of second place and more than 40 RBIs ahead. He also led the league in on-base percentage, an NPB award category of its own, which effectively made it four crowns.

That was the year the nickname stuck: Murakami-sama, a pun fusing his surname with kamisama, the Japanese word for god. It won the grand prize in Japan’s annual buzzword awards.

Youngest to 100 RBIs, Youngest Central League MVP

In 2021 Murakami drove in 112 runs, reaching 100 RBIs at 21 years and 7 months — a new NPB record for the youngest to do it, by a wide margin.

He played all 143 games that season, hitting .278 with 39 home runs, and shared the home run title with Kazuma Okamoto, now of the Toronto Blue Jays. It was his first title of any kind. Yakult won the pennant and the Japan Series.

He was named Central League MVP that year at 21, the youngest in the league’s history, then won it again in 2022 on the strength of the Triple Crown — a nearly unanimous vote. Back-to-back MVPs in a player’s early twenties is close to unheard of.

What Kind of Hitter He Is

Murakami is 6-foot-2 and 214 pounds and hits left-handed. He wore No. 55 with Yakult, the number Hideki Matsui wore with the Yankees. With the White Sox he wears 5.

His setup is distinctive: he holds his front arm pulled back so he is already in a hitting position before the pitch, which makes it easier to cover different pitch types. He keeps his weight on his back leg, takes a short stride to time the ball, and then unloads.

Elite Bat Speed

Bat speed is the foundation of everything else. Yakult chief batting coach Naoitsu Omatsu has said plainly that Murakami’s swing is faster than other hitters’.

Data from his 2025 season clocked his top bat speed at 85.7 mph. MLB classifies anything above 75 mph as a “fast swing,” so he is not near the threshold — he is well past it.

The speed comes from his lower half and core, and he has talked about how central weight training is to producing it. His maximum exit velocity is 116.5 mph, a number only a handful of MLB hitters reach.

Power to All Fields

The other defining trait is that he can hit the ball out in any direction. For a left-handed hitter, driving the ball with authority to left field takes away the obvious way to pitch him.

The 2022 breakdown makes the case: 25 home runs to right, 13 to center, 18 to left. Getting roughly 55% of your home runs to center or the opposite field is unusual for a left-handed slugger. Omatsu has credited him with carrying the ball from center to the opposite field better than his peers.

His handling of inside pitches has improved year over year. In 2022 he hit 17 home runs on pitches in on him, a sharp jump from the season before.

International Play

Murakami has produced in the biggest games Japan has played this decade — gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, and the hit that decided the 2023 WBC semifinal.

The 2023 WBC Walk-Off

Murakami played for Japan at the 2023 World Baseball Classic and delivered the tournament’s defining moment.

He arrived in bad form and stayed there: 2-for-14 through four first-round games. In the semifinal against Mexico he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.

Then the ninth inning. Japan trailed 5-4 with runners on first and second and nobody out. Murakami caught a 94 mph pitch from Mexico closer Giovanny Gallegos and drove it over the center fielder’s head and off the wall — a two-run double that won the game and put Japan in its first WBC final in 14 years.

Japan beat the United States the next day for its third title, and its first since 2009.

The 2026 WBC

Murakami returned for the March 2026 tournament, again wearing No. 55, his second WBC. It was his first competition since moving to MLB, and he hit mostly sixth while playing first base, including a grand slam against the Czech Republic.

The tournament as a whole did not go his way — he hit .211 — and Japan lost 8-5 to Venezuela in the quarterfinals, ending its title defense.

Tokyo Olympics Gold

Murakami started all five games at third base, batting eighth, as Japan won gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. He hit .333 with a home run and three RBIs.

The home run was the one that mattered. With the final against the United States scoreless in the third, he took Nick Martinez the other way for a solo shot. It held up as the winning run in a 2-0 victory. Manager Atsunori Inaba credited it afterward with turning the momentum Japan’s way.

It was Japan’s first Olympic baseball gold in 37 years — since the 1984 Los Angeles Games, when baseball was still a demonstration sport rather than a medal event.

His MLB Rookie Season

Murakami signed with the White Sox on Dec. 21, 2025, for two years and $34 million, taking No. 5.

The concern was adjustment. The ball is different, the parks are different, and MLB pitchers throw considerably harder on average than NPB pitchers do. The expectation was that it would take him time.

Home Runs in His First Three Games

It did not. Batting second and playing first base, Murakami homered in each of the first three games of the season — the first Japanese player to do that.

He kept the pace up, reaching 20 home runs in roughly two months. A right hamstring injury while running the bases in late May sent him to the injured list, and he returned in July.

On July 14 he was named to the AL All-Star team in Philadelphia as a reserve infielder, his first selection. He entered the Home Run Derby the night before and hit 9, losing in the first round by a single homer.

Breaking the Japanese Rookie Home Run Record

The second half brought no slowdown. His 25th home run, in early August, passed Okamoto — also a rookie, in Toronto — for the most home runs by a Japanese player in his first MLB season.

The previous record was Ohtani’s 22, set in 2018. Murakami has kept adding to it: 29 through Aug. 26, one shy of 30.

The 2026 Stat Line

Through Aug. 26:

Games	97
PA / AB	424 / 349
Hits	77
Home runs	29
RBIs	58
Runs	69
Walks	72
Strikeouts	143
AVG	.221
OBP	.356
SLG	.507
OPS	.863

The strikeouts, flagged as his biggest risk before the move, are exactly the problem scouts expected: 143 in 97 games, with a .221 average attached.

The rest of the profile is why it works anyway. He has drawn 72 walks for a .356 on-base percentage, and his .507 slugging pushes his OPS to .863. He is adapting as a hitter who covers a low batting average with plate discipline and power — a familiar type in modern MLB.

Before the season, FanGraphs projected him for 138 games with a .231 average, 30 home runs and 75 RBIs. The average has come in below that. The home runs — 29 in 97 games — are running well ahead.

The White Sox Are Winning

Rate Field, Chicago’s home park, plays well for home run hitters. Murakami was expected to split time between DH and first base; in practice he has played mostly first, which has kept him in the lineup consistently.

The White Sox were a rebuilding team going nowhere when they signed him. Through Aug. 26 they are 69-63 and lead the AL Central by 2.5 games over the Cleveland Guardians.

The original logic — a spot where he could adjust without pressure — has collided with an unexpectedly good team, to everyone’s benefit. The two-year deal was the risk-limiting option for both sides. After a season like this one, his value on the open market in 2027 will be a great deal higher than it was in 2025.

What to Watch

Murakami arrived with the best power résumé any Japanese hitter has brought to MLB: the single-season home run record for an Asian hitter, the youngest Triple Crown in NPB history, the youngest Central League MVP.

He has also already answered the question that mattered. The bat speed and the all-fields power translated, and they translated immediately.

What remains is the batting average and the strikeouts, and whether a .221 hitter with 29 home runs can carry a first-place lineup through September. Thirty home runs will come. The pennant race is the more interesting test.