Munetaka Murakami on Thu, Jul 23, 2026

Murakami's power outage continues as he walks but stays homerless over his last 10 games

Munetaka Murakami went 0-for-2 with a walk and two strikeouts against the Rangers on Thursday. No home run, no RBI — but drawing a walk in a limited sample suggests his eye at the plate remains sharp even as his overall production has cooled recently.

Over his last 10 games, Murakami is just 5-for-31, a .161 clip that sits well below his .231 season average. More striking is the power outage: he has gone the entire 10-game stretch without a home run and driven in just one run, a stark contrast to a season OPS of .901 that reflects a hitter who is normally a constant power threat. That gap between the season-long numbers and the recent stretch points to a clear cold spell rather than a change in true talent level. The platoon splits add another layer worth watching. Against right-handed pitching, Murakami is hitting .255 with a .978 OPS and 16 home runs in 161 at-bats — elite production by any measure. Against left-handers, though, he drops to .182 with a .731 OPS and just 4 homers in 66 at-bats, a split wide enough that the handedness of the starter he faces meaningfully changes how much of a threat he is on a given night.

Pitch-by-pitch data wasn't available for this game, so it's hard to pin down exactly what sequences he's seeing right now. Still, the willingness to take a walk instead of chasing suggests his timing hasn't completely fallen apart — the bigger question is when the long ball returns. Unicorn's take: this reads as a temporary cold spell layered on top of a real platoon tendency, so the next home run should be the clearest signal that he's turning the corner.