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MLB<\/a>: latest Japanese sensation, Munetaka Murakami, signs with the Chicago White Sox on a 2-year, $34M deal<\/span><\/p>\n When Murakami\u2019s name, and his intention to pursue a move into MLB made it to American media, I was one of many who had the same thought \u2013 go to the Dodgers.\u00a0 Failing that, he\u2019d go to the Yankees, or Red Sox or Mariners; teams who have had a good relationship with Japanese players and media.\u00a0 Or maybe even the Phillies or Blue Jays, teams with big wallets and feeling the pressure to win now.<\/span><\/p>\n So when news broke that he had signed with the Chicago White Sox, all I could do was throw my head back and laugh heartily, because I don\u2019t really think the man could have picked a worse place to land than the Southside of Chicago.<\/span><\/p>\n Like, did Murakami do any research before making his choice, or did he just leave everything to his agent\/representation to do all of it for him and make the decision on his behalf?\u00a0 I feel like it has to be the latter, because I can\u2019t imagine any ballplayer would voluntarily go to the Chicago White Sox, unless they were like a hometown kid out to try and prove a point or something, and even that\u2019s a stretch of a hypothesis.<\/span><\/p>\n The White Sox are coming off of their third straight season of losing 100 games, and two years removed from literally setting the all-time record in losses with their historic 121-loss season.\u00a0 If I\u2019m a free agent hot shot wanting to make a mark and set a team on fire, the White Sox are absolutely the worst team to try and accomplish such.\u00a0 Even if his hitting prowess does translate well to the Majors, it won\u2019t change the fact that the rest of the team sucks, and the only rookie* record that he\u2019ll be chasing will how many walks he\u2019ll be issued when the rest of the league starts pitching around him.<\/span><\/p>\n *term used loosely\u00a0 on account of the fact that he has 7 seasons of NPB experience, but MLB is a slave to appearances<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Plus, just about everything else about the organization sucks, from their management who has clearly no motivation to win much less put a competitive team on the field and seem to be going through the motions of pretending like they\u2019re rebuilding while more than likely just churning and trying to just make a paycheck, to their shitty ballpark which is basically the living embodiment of the stigma of shit being on the south side of cities being, shit.\u00a0 Obviously, he is under no obligation to live on the Southside of Chicago once he relocates to the United States, but traffic in the region is pretty turrible, and he\u2019s going to be playing an interesting game of either living near the park and being remotely close to the Southside, or living somewhere nice but run the risk of being victimized by the shitty traffic of the city.<\/span><\/p>\n What\u2019s even funnier to me is that above all else, from a holistic perspective, everything about this deal already seems like a big-ass L from the onset.\u00a0 Not that a $17M annual salary is anything to scoff at, even for professional athletes, but for a guy with the name, pedigree and aura as Murakami, not to mention MLB\u2019s gigantic raging boner for Japanese players, I feel like he\u2019s taking a really big settling deal, especially considering the fact that he landed on the White Sox.\u00a0 There is no team in baseball that wouldn\u2019t benefit from a guy that, even if his aggregate production were slashed to account for the league and culture shift, and he became \u201cjust\u201d a 20HR\/80RBI guy, there are definitely teams who pay more for that, and it\u2019s hard to believe that it was just the White Sox that came knocking.<\/span><\/p>\n I get that his general MO of high-power, low-contact is concerning for many, but Kyle Schwarber literally just signed for $30M per year over the next five years.\u00a0 Sure, teams are taking a gamble when it comes to his character, ability to gel with a clubhouse and they have no idea what his presence will do to a team\u2019s chemistry, but I still feel like that Murakami probably left at least $3-5M per year and another year on the table with the deal that he took.\u00a0 I mean, good for the White Sox and when the day is over I\u2019m not going to lose any sleep over any dude getting the short end of the stick, but I just feel like Murakami\u2019s camp really dropped the ball at getting their man paid, and signed with a team that doesn\u2019t absolutely suck.<\/span><\/p>\n Either way, I sure hope he really doesn\u2019t mind losing, because he is going to be doing a whole lot of it over the next two years.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s all part of the plan to take such a short-term deal, because by the time his two years of Southside prison are up, the Dodgers or Yankees will be in dire need of a new DH, and then if he\u2019s been playing his cards right, would be the most ideal candidate to swoop in and then sign his big fuck-you I\u2019m Japanese bitch<\/a> contract then.\u00a0 He is after all, just going to be 27 around that time, still very much reaching his physical peak.<\/span><\/p>\n But until then, we\u2019ll see how much he can tolerate being on a squad that\u2019s all but assured to lose at least 85 games a year for the life of this deal, and if he\u2019s still got the willpower and cojones to try and be a baller, or if he\u2019ll be just another White Sox player whose had the life sucked<\/a> out of them<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MLB: latest Japanese sensation, Munetaka Murakami, signs with the Chicago White Sox on a 2-year, $34M deal When Murakami\u2019s name, and his intention to pursue a move into MLB made it to American media, I was one of many who had the same thought \u2013 go to the Dodgers.\u00a0 Failing that, he\u2019d go to the … Continue reading I sure hope Murakami likes the taste of defeat<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,79,100,45,83,52,58,190],"class_list":["post-50978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-fail","tag-observations","tag-owned","tag-sports","tag-white-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50980,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50978\/revisions\/50980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}