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.