Leave it to the White Sox to sully the start of Spring Training for the man who may be their best acquisition in a long time. The news should all be about Munetaka Murakami (no matter how the locker room crew spelled his name), and instead it’s about Chris Getz proving his incompetence once again.
Getz has apparently finally figured out that another newcomer, Luisangel Acuña, isn’t actually a switch-hitter, as Getz had called him. And called him again. And again. And again. And again, so many times it’s very, very hard not to believe that Getz actually thought he’d traded Luis Robert Jr., for a player who didn’t just hit right-handed (and who, incidentally, has fairly big platoon splits, .592 OPS vs. righties, .732 vs. lefties).
Now Getz being a fool isn’t exactly man bites dog, but what’s more worrisome is that if he thought Acuña was a switch-hitter, did he also think he was an outfielder? That seems to be where the Sox plan to play the young speedster, despite the fact that both the Rangers and Mets had found that he’s a very fine middle infielder but can’t hack it in center. Guess we’ll have to wait to find out.
But let’s move on to the man who should be getting the attention, and whose performance could mean the difference between White Sox losses in the high-90s or worse (as most predicting algorithms believe will be the case) or the low-90s (as PECOTA anticipates).
Murakami the Good?
Reports are that the reason contending teams didn’t cough up the nine-figure offers prognosticators expected for the Japanese slugger is pretty straightforward. While Murakami boasts immense power, he strikes out way too much, has way too much swing-and-miss, and — and this is the important part, because lots of power hitters whiff a bunch — he struggles against pitches faster than 92 mph. That wasn’t a huge deal in Japan, where most pitches don’t throw that fast, but would render him impotent in an MLB where almost everybody could just blow balls by him.
Thing is, that 92 mph-plus problem depends on why it exists. It could very well be that Murakami just hasn’t faced enough mid-90s or higher heat to get used to it and adjust, in which case live pitching, lots of hours on the Trajekt machine and maybe a tiny swing adjustment could have him ready to take on major league velocity by the start of the regular season, or shortly thereafter.
Also on the good side is that Murakami’s not apt to become depressed, playing a for a team that usually loses. His Japanese team, the Yakult Swallows, has been perennially as bad as the Sox. It’s even possible he thought playing for the White Sox instead of a good team for a couple of years will give him a chance to adjust to a new country, language and level of play without the pressure to be a star immediately, as would be the case if he’d signed for a contender.
If this is the case, we should enjoy watching Murakami swat baseballs out of The Rate at a happy rate.
Murakami the Bad?
Alternatively, the reason Murakami has struggled against pitches faster than 92 mph could be that his reflexes are only so good. Maybe his brain/body/swing combo is just a millisecond or two slower than it needs to be in the big leagues, as happens to many power hitters as they slide downhill (or fall off a cliff, like José Abreu sadly did) in their mid-30s. That’s certainly possible, given that roughly 99.999999999999999% of humanity doesn’t have reaction time anywhere close to his.
If that turns out to be the case, it could be a very long season for Mune and the Sox, especially given how terrible his fielding is expected to be.
Murakami the Maybe?
Then there’s a middle ground, where the slugger can catch faster pitches down by his knees (as is often the case for lefties) but can’t cope with high heat, or even high almost-heat. That would mean relying on pitchers to make mistakes, but a whole lot of power hitters have had long and successful careers only being able to hit mistakes, especially early on (Kyle Schwarber, anyone?)
The upper side of this seems to be where the algorithms used for projections think Murakami will land. Steamer and ZiPS are pretty close in what they see for him, and FanGraphs Depth Charts is close to both of them, with him hitting a very respectable .232/.342/.449, for a wRC+ of 120, with 30 homers and 80 RBIs. However, that only adds up to a 2.2 WAR (just barely better than the level considered major-league starter), with his WAR brought way down because of abysmal defense.
(It will be interesting to see what the Sox, who like to pretend to care about defense, will do if Murakami’s D is as bad as advertised and he’s best moved among the other DH contenders who also can’t field a lick, like Andrew Benintendi and Lenyn Sosa, plus one of the catchers. If you don’t become a good defender in Japan, where D is high art, it’s unlikely to occur here.)
But it’s spring!
Well, baseball spring, anyway. So let’s go with Murakami the Good.
And, what the heck, let’s even pretend Acuña’s a switch-hitter. And good outfielder.