With Major League Baseball’s winter meetings ending on Wednesday, there still doesn’t seem to be a strong sense of what Japanese star Munetaka Murakami is going to do in free agency.
Murakami has to make a decision sooner rather than later due to his 45-day posting period ending on December 22.
Japanese and international players only have that window, but it remains uncertain what his market even looks like at this point.
Predicting what might happen in one of the most fascinating free-agency cases in baseball, Ryan Finkelstein of Just Baseball believes Murakami will end up with the Philadelphia Phillies on a seven-year, $140 million contract.
“If you rewind the tape three years, the anticipation for Munetaka Murakami’s MLB debut was one of the biggest talking point of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, with Murakami being one of the stars for Team Japan...
“The Phillies have been trying to land a player from Japan for years now to build their footprint over in Asia and there is no better player to do it than Murakami. A hitter’s friendly ballpark, Citizen’s Bank would be the perfect new home for Murakami,” he wrote.
If someone had predicted just a few months ago that Murakami would only land $140 million over seven years, most would have been shocked.
However, the reality is that he struggled quite a bit in Japan last year and also dealt with injuries. He isn’t the sure thing many expected him to be a few years ago, and that’s something Philadelphia has to consider.
On the flip side, the upside is enormous, and there’s plenty of reason to believe this might work out.
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