Should the Chicago White Sox EXTEND Munetaka Murakami? I CHGO White Sox Podcast

Sean Anderson (0:04)

Hey, yo, welcome to the CHGO White Sox Podcast. I'm gonna be live from the Xfinity loft here in the CHGO studios here in the West Loop of Chicago. I'm your host, Sean Anderson, alongside me, me, myself, and I'm being produced today by Joey Christopoulos.

Joey Christopoulos (0:20)

You're not alone.

Sean Anderson (0:21)

No, but you're not on this side of the camera. I mean, if you were on this side of the camera, then you'd be with me. Now you're just a disembembered voice.

You are Patrick Swayze in Ghost or Ghost.

Joey Christopoulos (0:31)

I am your conscience.

Sean Anderson (0:32)

Yeah, you are. It's a good person. Good sounding board to have.

Joey Christopoulos (0:35)

Expending Munetaka Murakami is good in the long run.

Sean Anderson (0:40)

Now I need the devil. Where's Steven?

Now trade him in his highest value. Now I need Steven to come in here and be like, Brandon Nysert should be dissected like a frog.

Hit the thumbs up button if you haven't already. Make sure you subscribe to the CHGO Sports YouTube channel. We have some Chris Getz comments to remark about. He talked about having no regrets after the trade deadline. We'll see if that's true or not. We'll see his reasoning for that. He also discussed extending Munetaka Murakami and that seemingly being a goal this offseason for the Chicago White Sox. We'll talk about that, why they should, why they shouldn't. And then we will get into Chase Meidroth being named a gold glove finalist. Can he win? Also, where's Tristan Peters? Three center fielders are announced and one of them is not Tristan Peters. Was he robbed? Did he not do enough robbing? We'll discuss again. Hit that thumbs up button if you haven't already. Make sure you subscribe to the CHGO Sports YouTube channel.

Regarding our headline already, Should the White Sox Extend Munetaka Murakami? David saying, if the price is right, and David McKintry saying, should they extend him? Yes, definitely. Yes. Hit that thumbs up button and, you know, we don't have a ton of certainty on if this is possible, if this will happen. They have a pretty short timeline to do this, October 14th to December 1st before a lockout is possible. They won't be able to discuss this after December 1st until a new CBA is signed. And when they would be able to repick up these conversations might be 2027 in, you know, the fourth month or so. So it's tough to truly have a discussion on what it will look like. Chris Getz, Per Scott Merkin, and we don't have the video yet, darn. But thank you to Scott Merkin for tweeting out these quotes.

Chris Getz on discussing a extension with Munetaka Murakami's agency privately and keeping it quiet. What he did say though, Munet means a lot to us. We certainly want him to come back and, I underline this so you know it's important, be here a long time. Obviously, he's got one more year. He signed a two year deal for $34 million.

What would that look like, extension wise, and should the White Sox be pursuing Munetaka Murakami as their franchise first baseman? I think easily people are, David, I know David's also a Yocult Swallows fan, so he's kind of a little bit jaded. He's a White Sox fan and a Yocult Swallow fan, so his worlds are colliding here. But, it's an easy yes. There isn't another first baseman in the system worth a damn. And Munetaka Murakami, while it wasn't the greatest rookie season of all time, the MLBPA announced their Rookie of the Year finalist. It's Parker Messick. It's, oh, why can't I think of the other name? Oh, Kevin McGonigal, duh. And Munetaka Murakami. He's still top three in Rookie of the Year finalist. You got exactly what you want in a first baseman. You have a powerful, strong, confident swinger up there, a guy that understands the strike zone and while he does have a bit of a strikeout problem, most hitters in Major League Baseball do. The Kyle Schwabers, the Nick, the Nick Kurtz, those guys are striking out around 35% of the time. Munet sometimes gets up to 40%, you know, a little bit worried there. But I think that he had a pretty nice response at the end of the season when that struggle really started to build up toward, on him after that Kevin Gosman homerun that he hit on the 17th or so on August off the scoreboard. He really struggled. And what Murakami's response was in the middle of September was that he wasn't feeling the strength in his legs like he necessarily needed. And you did start to see at the end of the season, he started to pick up. I believe in the last 10 games, he had four homeruns. And while in the last final three games of the postseason, he went one for 11 and didn't have a homerun, his first four games in the postseason were awesome. He had several hits, he had a homerun off Parker Messick.