How scared should Tigers fans actually be of Munetaka Murakami after White Sox deal?

Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami's free agency was astoundingly quiet until the Tigers rival, the White Sox, made their first major free agent splash in years and signed him to a two-year, $34 million deal on Sunday — just a day before his signing window closed.

Murakami is bringing over an impressive resume from NPB — he broke Sadaharu Oh's single-season home run record for a Japanese-born player in 2022 (56) — but there are some red flags. Truly comprehensive scouting reports are a little hard to come by with international players and, for Japanese and Korean players, have varying degrees of usefulness because the transition to MLB can be so difficult and trip up even the best of players at first.

However, the prevailing narrative around Murakami doesn't reflect well on him in any league. Apparently, he can't hit the fastball.

He's also never had a season quite as good as 2022, and he was hurt for the majority of the 2025 season, so his contract with the White Sox is kind of an elevated prove-it deal. The White Sox are banking on him to figure it out, but Tigers fans are split on how much we should actually be concerned about Murakami playing against Detroit.

Tigers rival White Sox add potentially fearsome slugger Munetaka Murakami on two-year deal

There's general consensus on Murakami's defense at the infield corners, which is to say that it isn't great. He projects as a full-time DH down the line, which surely hurt his market.

However, there seems to be little veracity to the claim that he struggles against the fastball. According to Baseball America, most of his power comes against that pitch — and he still managed to give the Yakult Swallows 24 homers in just 69 games this season — the real problem is off-speed stuff. He had "40%+ whiff rates against splitters, changeups, curveballs and sliders" in 2025 and a 28.6% overall K rate.

And the Tigers' pitching staff loves off-speed and breaking stuff. The changeup is obviously Tarik Skubal's favorite wipeout pitch, and even Jack Flaherty's secondary pitches — especially his knuckle curve — generated low slugging against.

Unless Murakami figures out those struggles really quickly, the Tigers should be fine going with their usual game plan against him. His first year in MLB is likely to be a huge adjustment on multiple fronts.

If he figures it out in year two? We can cross that bridge when we come to it.