Murakami Munetaka (Yakult Swallows), who signed a ‘Jackpot’ contract with a whopping 1.8 billion yen (approximately 16.4 billion won) after hitting ’56 homers’, will taste the greatest humiliation ever.
Local multiple media outlets such as Japan’s ‘Nikkan Sports’ and Daily Sports said on the 14th (Korean time), “Trevor Bauer (Yokohama DeNA Baystars) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (Orix Buffaloes) were selected in the 2023 Japan Professional Baseball All-Star Game Plus One vote.” revealed
‘Plus One Voting’ is a system that does not exist in the KBO League and the Major Leagues. In the case of Japanese professional baseball, 31 members each from the Central League and the Pacific League are selected through fan and team voting and manager selection. And the last one can be chosen by the fans once again, and this vote is called ‘Plus One Voting’.
In this year’s Plus One vote, it was Yamamoto and Bauer who succeeded in boarding the All-Star Game’s ‘Last Train’. Yamamoto is the ‘ace’ pitcher representing Japanese professional baseball, including four pitcher crowns in the 2021-2022 season, the Sawamura Award given to the best pitcher, and being selected as the regular season MVP. This year, Yamamoto is active with an average ERA of 1.79 with 8 wins and 3 losses in 12 games.
The glory of the ‘Plus One Voting’ in the Central League went to Bauer. Bauer, from the 2020 Major League National League Cy Young Award, has appeared in 11 games this year and is recording an average ERA of 3.67 with 6 wins and 2 losses. In the meantime, Bauer has been encouraging his vote, such as making a ‘promise’ through SNS to participate in the All-Star Game, and was honored in the first year of entering Japanese professional baseball.
As Bauer became the main character of the Central League Plus One vote, Murakami Munetaka, who hit 56 home runs last year, tasted humiliation. Murakami is Japan’s representative ‘Geopo’ and received the first nomination from Yakult in the 2017 rookie draft. Murakami only played in 6 games in his first season, but from 2019, his second year as a player, he became a regular starter.
Murakami played in 143 games, hit 36 homers, and played an active role with 96 RBIs, 76 runs, a batting average of 0.231 OPS of 0.813. And last year, in 120 games, he scored 28 homers, 86 RBIs, 70 points, a batting average of 0.307, and an OPS of 1.012. His performance last season was the highlight.
Murakami took part in 141 games last year, recording 155 hits, 56 home runs, 134 RBIs, 114 runs, 118 walks, and a batting average of 0.318 and 1.168 OPS. As a result, he took the lead in batting average, home runs, and RBIs, becoming the youngest player to win the ‘Triple Crown’. Even though Murakami is not a free agent (FA), he even signed a 3-year, 1.8 billion yen contract.
Based on the previous season’s record, Murakami proudly boarded the World Baseball Classic (WBC) national team. However, from the WBC, Murakami’s results are disappointing. Murakami only recorded 6 hits and 1 home run batting average of 0.231 in 7 appearances in the WBC. And his bad flow continued into the regular season.메이저사이트주소
Murakami has 65 hits, 15 home runs, 44 RBIs, 39 runs, and a batting average of 0.233 OPS of 0.793 in 80 games this year. In the confrontation with Chunichi Dragons on the 12th and 13th, right before the first half schedule ended, a total of three arches were drawn, but it is impossible to conclude that it is a ‘resurrection’. Even excluding the impact he left last year, Murakami, who is having the worst season of his career, was eventually turned away from fans in the All-Star Game vote.
Murakami broke off a sluggish start by ranking 4th in the Central League third baseman category with 9316 votes in the first round of fan voting, and was not named to the All-Star list. And he drank high in the plus one vote, which was his last ‘hope’. According to ‘Tokyo Sports’, Bauer, who took first place in the Central League, got 369,446 votes, the highest ever, while Murakami, who was ranked second, only got 32,818 votes. The gap with Bauer was 330,000 votes, a whopping 11 times difference.
Last year, he drew 56 arches and emerged as the best hitter representing Japan, but fans turned their backs on the endless sluggishness. It cannot but be the humiliation of a giant who rewrote the history of Japanese professional baseball.