The clock is ticking.
Munetaka Murakami was posted on Nov. 8, and he has until Dec. 22 to sign with an MLB team. There are no shortage of suitors.
ESPN's Jeff Passan shared a list of five possible landing spots for Murakami:
- New York Mets
- Boston Red Sox
- Texas Rangers
- Arizona Diamondbacks
- Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pirates showed up a couple times in Passan's free agency breakdown and evidently are at least making noise about making a splash this offseason.
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The Mets and Red Sox would be obvious big-market destinations. The Rangers and Diamondbacks are both looking to bounce back after struggling since they played in the World Series a few seasons ago.
Passan doesn't mention the Los Angeles Dodgers or Seattle Mariners, who other insiders have suggested could be in on Murakami.
The desire for Murakami is simple: He's a 25-year old third baseman with immense pop. He holds the NPB record for home runs in a season by a Japanese-born player (56).
"He is in line to land the first nine-figure deal for a Japanese position player coming to MLB," Passan writes. "Breaking Sadaharu Oh's single-season Nippon Professional Baseball home run record by a Japanese-born player in 2022 has made Murakami joining MLB years in the making."
There's always the question of how a skillset translates, but in Murakami's case, it's not a big enough question to stop teams from offering him big deals.
Someone is going to land a new heart-of-the-order bat in Murakami. There's about a month for teams to make their case.
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