Munetaka Murakami, who two years ago became the youngest player to win a batting triple crown in Japanese pro baseball, has signed with Casey Close of Excel Sports Management, Japan’s Daily Sports reported Saturday, citing an unnamed source.
The Yakult Swallows’ 24-year-old left-handed-hitting third-baseman is currently in the second year of a reported three-year deal, that will make him available for posting the winter before his 26th birthday.
The story quoted a Swallows executive as saying that the team will still post Murakami after the 2025 season even if future changes to the posting system make it unprofitable to do so.
“Our stance has not changed,” the source said. “We support his dream.”
Murakami led Japan’s Central League in 2022 with a .318 average, 56 home runs and 134 RBIs. Speaking at the start of the season, he attributed his 2023 drop to making changes in his approach based on things he picked up playing with Shohei Ohtani and other Japanese stars in last year’s World Baseball Classic.
“I’m not interested in getting back to where I was before,” he told jballallen.com in March, “I am only moving forward.”
In 2023, he batted .256, his lowest average since batting .231 in 2019 as the CL’s 19-year-old rookie of the year, with 31 home runs. As of Saturday’s games, Murakami is hitting .240 with 30 home runs, which is a fairly impressive total considering how poorly the balls used in the first half of the 2024 season were flying.
