Murakami's Power Surge
- White Sox slugger Munetaka Murakami hit his 10th homer of the season in the team's 24th game, breaking Shohei Ohtani's Japanese MLB pace record. ( ) - That homer was his fifth straight game with a long ball, including a 451-foot shot that electrified fans. (x.com) - The streak has sparked early-season Rookie- and MVP-talk around the White Sox lineup. (x.com)
Munetaka Murakami hit his 10th home run in the White Sox’s 24th game Wednesday night, passing Shohei Ohtani for the fastest 10-homer start by a Japanese-born player in Major League Baseball. (mlb.com) The homer came in Chicago’s 11-7 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on April 22 at Chase Field, and it extended Murakami’s streak to five straight games with a home run. His seventh-inning drive traveled 454 feet, the longest White Sox homer of the 2026 season according to Statcast. (mlb.com) A night earlier, Murakami had reached nine homers in 23 games, already the most by any Japanese-born player through that span in the majors. MLB.com said Ohtani had six in his first 23 games as a hitter. (mlb.com) Murakami also tied the Major League rookie record by homering in five consecutive games, becoming the 13th rookie to do it. He matched a White Sox franchise mark shared by six players, including A.J. Pierzynski and José Abreu. (usnews.com) The surge has landed in the middle of a White Sox season that still looks unsettled in the standings. Chicago entered April 23 at 9-14, last in the American League Central, even as Murakami’s bat helped power a recent run of home runs from the middle of the lineup. (fangraphs.com) Murakami arrived in Chicago only four months ago, when the White Sox signed the 26-year-old Japanese free agent to a two-year, $34 million contract on December 21, 2025. The deal was one of the club’s biggest offseason moves after three straight 100-loss seasons. (mlb.com) He came to Major League Baseball with a long record in Japan. MLB.com’s player bio says he hit 33 home runs in 2025 despite an injury-shortened season, and his 2022 total of 56 set the Nippon Professional Baseball single-season record for a Japan-born player. (mlb.com; espn.com) For now, the numbers are moving faster than the White Sox in the standings. Murakami’s first month in the majors has already put him in the same statistical frame as Ohtani, and every game in this streak has raised the bar again. (mlb.com; mlb.com)
