Murakami Kami achieves 30 home runs in his first season of MLB debut... 4th record for Japanese player

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Jang Hyeon-gu = Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami (Chicago White Sox) hit the 30-home run mark in the season as soon as he debuted in the Major League Baseball (MLB).

Murakami hit his 30th home run of the year with a two-run arc to the left in the first inning in a home game against the Minnesota Twins on the 6th (Korean time), which was lost 4-6.

As a result, Murakami became the fourth Japanese player to hit 30 home runs or more in a season, following Shohei Ohtani (Los Angeles Dodgers), Hideki Matsui (31 home runs in 2004), and Seiya Suzuki (Chicago Cubs, 32 home runs in 2025), who hit 30 home runs for six consecutive years including this year.

The most home runs ever hit by a Korean batter in a season is Choo Shin-soo's 24 in 2019.

This year, when Lee Jeong-hoo (San Francisco Giants) played virtually full-time, the batting gap between Korean and Japanese big leaguers widened the widest.

Led by Ohtani (30), Murakami (30), Kazuma Okamoto (Toronto Blue Jays, 28), Suzuki (24), and Masataka Yoshida (Boston Red Sox, 5) were the first Japanese batters to hit more than 100 home runs in a season together. Okamoto is also a rookie who debuted in the big league this year.