Watch Munetaka Murakami Crush MLB-Leading 12th HR for White Sox Win in Trending Video

Chicago White Sox slugger Munetaka Murakami doesn't make a lot of contact, but the baseball goes really far.

Murakami hit his MLB-leading 12th homer of the season in the seventh inning of Monday's 8-7 win over the Los Angeles Angels on Monday night.

Per MLB.com's Sarah Langs, the launch angle of 48 degrees on Murakami's homer was the ninth-highest for any over-the-fence homer since Statcast tracking began in 2015.

When Murakami was posted by the Yakult Swallows in November, there wasn't a strong consensus about what type of player he was going to be in MLB.

The power output in NPB was prodigious, including a single-season record 56 homers in 2022, but his contact rate was enough of a concern that Murakami wound up taking a short-term two-year, $34 million deal from the White Sox to prove himself against MLB pitching.

It turns out Murakami has essentially carried over his NPB performance to MLB. He is almost definitionally a three-true-outcomes hitter with a .243/.373/.592 slash line in 126 plate appearances through 29 games.

Of those 126 plate appearances, 75 have ended in a homer (12), walk (22) or strikeout (41). He has yet to get an extra-base hit that wasn't a homer.

Per Baseball Savant, Murakami ranks in the 97th or 98th percentile in average exit velocity, barrel rate and hard-hit rate. It's not quite Aaron Judge-levels from his three MVP seasons, which are all 100th percentile in each of the three categories, but it's close enough that Murakami is more than justifying the investment the White Sox made in him.

The win also moved the White Sox (12-17) to within three games of the Detroit Tigers atop the AL Central in the still-early stages of the season.