When I saw something a few days ago, I parked it in a tab because it seemed so unlikely to impact the Cubs. After all, there hadn’t been any sourced connections between the Cubs and Munetaka Murakami, and the fit was very difficult to see if Murakami wasn’t a true third baseman.
But then Bruce Levine wrote that the Cubs could in fact be considering Murakami as an option at third base, so I think there’s good reason to share that something I had parked.
It’s Kiley McDaniel’s take at ESPN on Murakami as a future MLB player, which did include a SPECULATIVE mention of the Cubs. Although McDaniel notes the extreme power potential that Murakami brings to the table, he registers a lot of the contact-related concerns:
“On the other hand, his homer totals haven’t surpassed 33 since 2022 due to a spiking strikeout rate that’s underpinned by contact rates that are as bad as almost any hitter in the majors, but while facing lesser pitching in Japan. Murakami also projects to be a first baseman in MLB but primarily played third base in Japan, with very limited experience at first thus far.
Some evaluators think his in-zone and off-speed whiff rates can be improved with mechanical/approach adjustments, even as he faces better pitching in the States, in part because of his age and bat speed. That’s speculative, but the upside could be huge to get four full seasons out of a player in his 20s who’s one of the best home run threats on the planet. So you can see how some are projecting six years at $20 million per year, but also how some teams are so scared of the downside that they wouldn’t guarantee more than $50 million ….
The Yankees have a history of highly valuing exit velocity and age when it comes to acquiring players, so they’re one of the rumored potential landing spots more because of their expected evaluation of Murakami, rather than needing power in the lineup from a corner position per se. The Chicago Cubs make sense, as Murakami would join an influx of young hitters (Matt Shaw, Moises Ballesteros, Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcantara, Jonathon Long), while others either just entered free agency (Kyle Tucker) or are set to after next season (Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Nico Hoerner). The Giants also make some sense, the Houston Astros could be a fit if they move Christian Walker’s contract and the Toronto Blue Jays (if they don’t land Tucker) could also be a landing spot.
However, given the potentially manageable AAV and upside, almost any team could justify jumping in on Murakami if their evaluations deem it reasonable.”
McDaniel projects that Munetaka Murakami may not wind up getting a nine-figure contract, and the all-in price, even including the posting fee, might wind up in the $90 million range. If that happens, then it means the pool of suitors was very small, the concerns about the contact rate are very real, and the likelihood of him playing third base is very slim.
Like I said yesterday, if you were a big enough believer in the bat – especially given Murakami’s youth – then maybe you don’t care whether he can play third base effectively. And if the Cubs go shopping on the trade market for a starting pitcher, then maybe they wind up losing a bat or two from their current bat-mostly group of emerging young players. There are reasons this could make sense, regardless of third base.
… if the Cubs evaluate Murakami’s bat highly enough. And that’s the part that is so difficult to speculate on, given how dramatically wide the opinions are about whether Murakami can make enough contact against MLB-caliber pitching to let his power play.
That is to say, it’s probably fair that McDaniel included the Cubs as a “make sense” team, and that’s before you consider their in-roads with Japanese talent. The Cubs should be one of the teams that is just about always mentioned when any Japanese star comes over. The Cubs are going to consider them all, given their success in helping players make that transition. I tend to think that, if geography isn’t a limiting factor, then the Cubs are probably going to look pretty attractive to most Japanese players.
I have my doubts, in the end, that the Cubs are going to risk $90+ million (maybe much, much more) on a position player who feels a bit like a luxury move, and for whom the risk of a true zero-value bust is significant. Say there’s a 50% chance you get nothing from Murakami, a 30% chance he gives you a few Patrick-Wisdom-like years, and a 20% chance he makes adjustments and becomes a Brent Rooker-like star masher. That guy is going to get over $100 million every time, because there are teams willing to take the risk for the upside, and willing to paper it over with more money if they’re wrong. I’m not sure that’s the Cubs.
More on the Cubs and Murakami, if you missed it here yesterday:
The fit here is a little tougher than, for example, Kazuma Okamoto, whom others see as a more plausible big league third baseman, and who may not cost nearly as much. Moreover, although Murakami comes with more upside thanks to his top-of-the-scale power, he comes with such significant swing-and-miss risk that he may never hit at all in MLB.
So why would the Cubs even be interested? Well, if you zoom out, it’s not hard to see. You’re talking about a 25-year-old Japanese superstar. Maybe he still has development ahead of him that can translate in MLB. And maybe the gargantuan power carries over. And maybe he can hack third base well enough to stick there for a while, and we know from Alex Bregman and Eugenio Suarez rumors that the Cubs are considering an upgrade there offensively. Heck, even if Murakami can’t ultimately handle third base, maybe he winds up hitting so well for so long that you don’t care if he’s just a bat.
The value of having a guy like Murakami could also be more than his production, as he has been one of the biggest names in Japan for years now. The Cubs are continuing to build out something of a talent pipeline, and if they believe they have an organizational skill at incorporating and maximizing Japanese players, then they should be looking at a guy like Murakami, even if the fit is a little tricky.
All that said, I think it’s important to note that the Munetaka Murakami mention came in the context of Levine running down virtually every single player and path for the Cubs this offseason. Yes, he reported the interest, but it was within a much broader context. Framing it that way, would it surprise you to learn that the Cubs have scouted, studied, and analyzed Murakami? Of course not. They’re going to do that with any player coming over from Japan at this point. That isn’t the same thing as an aggressive pursuit, about which we’ve not yet heard anything.
Because he was posted earlier than the other top Japanese players, Murakami’s deadline to sign is coming first, on December 22. That could mean we see some real movement this week at the Winter Meetings, with the more serious suitors shaking loose.
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