A disclaimer is necessary. I write about Japanese baseball in general and pro baseball in particular, but the team that still attracts more of my attention than the others, at least when they are good, is the Yakult Swallows.
The fall
After hitting his 55th home run last season, Munetaka Murakami had been in a funk, a funk that carried through the World Baseball Classic and into the 2023 regular season.
Sometime between then and the start of this season, I said on the Japan Baseball Weekly Podcast that I expected Murakami at the age of 24 to be a better player than he was in 2022 at the age of 22.
This was met with some skepticism, since it seemed unlikely Murakami could surpass that historic age-21 season so quickly. I wasn’t talking about his numbers, however, but saying the sum total of his abilities on a ball field would likely be greater this year, that he could take a step forward as a player even if his offensive numbers didn’t come close to matching his magical 2022.
The spring swing
Right from the start of the World Baseball Classic, Murakami simply wasn’t getting good swings very often. Now and then the barrel of his bat would run into a ball and the thing would go into orbit, but Murakami generally was swinging and missing badly. He still had that great strike zone judgement and so until recently was leading the CL in walks.
I suggested he might have some physical condition that was impairing his swing without him being aware of it, and some people I know discounted that as ludicrous. Although I recall a study in the early days of pitch tracking that showed how hitters who suddenly showed unusual difficulty hitting a particular type of pitch in a certain location, were later diagnosed with an injury.
Teruyo, who watched the WBC intently, said Murakami was struggling mentally with the pressure since equaling Sadaharu Oh’s career home run high. I thought that might be possible, but I just don’t know, and have no way of knowing without hearing his side.
Summer time
More and more this past month, Murakami has been stinging the ball to all fields, and even a lot of his misses look like good swings. The numbers he put up in July, when his OPS through Saturday was second in the CL only to Chunichi’s Takaya Ishikawa, reflect this.
Whatever had caused Murakami’s swing to be off, is apparently no longer in play. Even when he hit a bullet in Sunday’s game for a base hit against DeNA, Murakami looked absolutely crushed he didn’t get under it and launch it into the stands, So despite a poor first half, there’s no reason he can’t still be a better player this year than he was a year ago.
