Mariners' post-Polanco options keep dwindling after Munetaka Murakami stunner

In the end, the idea of the Seattle Mariners signing Munetaka Murakami was all smoke and no fire. And what smoke there was always felt kind of fake, like what comes from that "smoke machine" your try-hard neighbor uses to make his house look spooky on Halloween.

As reported by ESPN's Jeff Passan, Murakami is signing with the Chicago White Sox on a two-year, $34 million contract. The deal comes a day before his posting window was due to close, with Passan further noting that the Japanese slugger is expected to play first base on the South Side.

Murakami's agreement with Chicago also comes just days after our last check-in on his market. Though there was no real buzz linking Murakami to the Mariners, it was a popular speculative fit, and the closing of his posting seemed like a potential opportunity for Seattle to pick him up at a discount.

Mariners' post-Polanco options keep dwindling after Munetaka Murakami stunner

Not to toot our own horn or anything — narrator: they are tooting their own horn — but the discount part has played out. Murakami's $34 million guarantee is a fraction of what major publications had projected him for, with MLB Trade Rumors even going for eight years, $180 million for the 25-year-old.

For the Mariners, the guarantee on Murakami's contract is also notable because it's $6 million less than what Jorge Polanco got from the New York Mets. That was also a two-year deal, and the Mariners have been scrambling to respond to it since it was struck last week.

Hence the big question: If so many others saw the Mariners as such a clear fit for Murakami, why are they now on the outside looking in at a deal they could have done?

With $15 million seemingly left on their budget for new salaries for 2026, signing Murakami to a $17 million-per-year deal would have been a bend-don't-break signing for the Mariners. He then could have slotted in a regular role at DH, with cameo appearances at third base and first base. Seattle would have been signing him first and foremost for his power, which one executive thinks is a 90 on the 20-80 scouting scale.

But if the Mariners simply didn't want Murakami at any price, well, that's fair.

His power may be the real deal, but it won't do him much good in MLB if he can't literally hit the ball. There's a real concern that he won't be able to, as he had a major problem with strikeouts even in the relatively low-K environment of NPB. In 2025, he fanned at a 28.6 percent clip against a league average of 18.4 percent. The norm for MLB was 22.2 percent.

Even more specifically, Murakami struggled to hit high velocity in NPB this year. He hit just .093 against fastballs at 93 mph or above, hinting at a potential death sentence in an MLB environment where the average fastball was 94.3 mph this year.

He was always going to be a risk for someone on these accounts, and the White Sox are actually a good team to take that risk on. They made progress with their rebuild this year, particularly with an offense that Murakami could make even better in 2026 and 2027. But if his bat doesn't hasten the end of their rebuild, then oh well. It probably had another year or two to go anyway,

Because their attention is firmly on the World Series, the Mariners need a bat they can rely on. Polanco offered exactly that in 2025, so the team can't be faulted if it would rather not chance it on his replacement.