Murakami Eyeing 6th Straight

Munetaka Murakami enters Thursday with a home run in five straight games, one swing from the longest Major League Baseball streak by a Japanese-born player. (mlb.com) The Chicago White Sox rookie hit his 10th homer on April 22, a 451-foot shot against Arizona, and tied both Shohei Ohtani’s five-game mark and the White Sox club record. (mlb.com) Murakami is 25, bats left-handed, and reached 10 home runs in his first 24 Major League games; MLB.com said no Japanese-born player had hit more than nine in his first 23 games, with Ohtani at six through that span. (baseball-reference.com, mlb.com) The chase is landing in a broader Japanese hitting moment. Seiya Suzuki opened 2026 with two home runs in his first 12 games for the Chicago Cubs, while Masataka Yoshida was batting.324 with a.477 on-base percentage for the Boston Red Sox through his first 14 games. (espn.com, espn.com) Murakami was already a star before he came over. In Japan, he hit 56 home runs in 2022, breaking Sadaharu Oh’s single-season record for a Japanese-born player in Nippon Professional Baseball. (mlb.com) He also arrived with an international résumé: a gold medal with Japan at the Tokyo Olympics and a key home run in the 2023 World Baseball Classic final against the United States. (mlb.com) The current streak has moved fast. Murakami homered in four straight games by April 21, joining Ohtani and Suzuki as the only Japanese-born players to reach that number in the majors, then matched Ohtani at five the next night. (mlb.com, mlb.com) Ohtani’s own five-game run came with the Dodgers on July 23, 2025, when he tied a Los Angeles franchise record. Murakami now has a chance on April 23, 2026, to move past that number and set a new Japanese-born standard in Major League Baseball. (mlb.com, mlb.com)