Roki Sasaki is here. Munetaka Murakami could be next.

From Shohei Ohtani to Yoshinobu Yamamoto to Sasaki, there's been a wave of young Japanese superstars coming to MLB from Nippon Professional Baseball over the last few seasons. And there could be another big one coming next year.

The superstar slugger Murakami, who two years ago hit 56 home runs in NPB to break the legendary Sadaharu Oh's record for the most in a season by a Japanese-born player, is said to be coming to the Major Leagues in 2026.

Murakami is just turning 25 years old, and he's already a two-time Central League MVP, Triple Crown winner and four-time All-Star in Japan. He's won the Japan Series with his NPB club, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, in 2021, and he's won the World Baseball Classic with Team Japan in 2023.

Here are four key things to know about Murakami and what to expect from him if he jumps to MLB.

1) He's the most dangerous power hitter in Japan

Murakami's slugging numbers are off the charts. He doesn't just have the 56-homer season, he has five 30-homer seasons before turning 25.

No Major League player has ever done that. Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Frank Robinson, Eddie Mathews and Jimmie Foxx are the only MLB players with even four 30-homer seasons before age 25.

Murakami has already hit 224 home runs for the Swallows. The most by any Major Leaguer before their age-25 season is 190 by Mathews.

Murakami has three home run crowns in six full seasons in the Central League, averaging 37 home runs a year over that time. He has a career .550 slugging percentage and .945 OPS. This is a player with elite power, no matter what league he's playing in.

2) He hits the ball as hard as MLB stars

Murakami's run in the 2023 World Baseball Classic didn't just let him showcase his power on the international stage, it gave us some Statcast data on how hard he hits the ball.

It's "very hard."

In Japan's win over the U.S. in the championship game, Murakami absolutely crushed a 115.1 mph, 432-foot home run off D-backs starting pitcher Merrill Kelly. It was the hardest home run hit by any player in the entire World Baseball Classic.

Murakami's blast reached the upper echelon of exit velocity. It is a skill to be able to hit a baseball that hard -- only 27 of the 252 qualifying hitters on Statcast's exit velocity leaderboard for 2024 had a max exit velo of 115-plus mph. And it's another thing entirely to also be able to drive the ball that hard in the air, over the fence.

Murakami hitting such a mammoth home run off a Major League starter is a sign of how his power could translate to the Major Leagues. In the 2024 season, only 14 MLB players hit even one home run 115 mph or harder -- and that list includes many of the game's biggest sluggers like Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Yordan Alvarez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Pete Alonso and Fernando Tatis Jr. That is the class of power Murakami possesses.

That homer wasn't the only big hit Murakami had in the World Baseball Classic. His walk-off double against Mexico in the semifinals was a 111.0 mph, 400-foot rocket off the wall at loanDepot park, and it came against another big league pitcher, Cardinals reliever Giovanny Gallegos.

And in the quarterfinals against Italy, Murakami also ripped a 112.4 mph opposite-field double that was hit so hard it ate up the Brewers' Sal Frelick in left field. That's three balls hit 110 mph or harder in the WBC for Murakami. The only player with more was Ohtani.

The point is this: Murakami fits right in with top MLB players with how hard he hits the ball, and he can do it to all fields.

3) His 2022 season was one of the best ever

Let's take a second to appreciate Murakami's record-setting 2022 season for the Swallows. It's one of the greatest batting seasons we've ever seen.

Breaking Oh's home run record was historic by itself. But Murakami also won the batting Triple Crown -- he batted .318 with the 56 homers and 134 RBIs. And he did all that at age 22.

Murakami was NPB's eighth batting Triple Crown winner and the first in nearly two decades, since Nobuhiko Matsunaka in 2004. And he was the youngest Triple Crown winner in NPB history.

Murakami's season earned him unanimous MVP honors, making him a back-to-back MVP winner. Before him, the last unanimous MVP in NPB was Masahiro Tanaka in 2013, and the last hitter to be a unanimous MVP was Oh in 1977.

He hit everything. Here's a breakdown of Murakami's ranks in various batting metrics that season, including how he hit both righties and lefties and against different pitch types (courtesy of the NPB batter profile app).

Murakami was more than twice as good as the average NPB hitter that season. His wRC+, a stat measuring all-around offensive performance, was 228; league average is 100.

Murakami was, essentially, Japan's Aaron Judge. Judge, who had his historic 62-home run season for the Yankees that same year, had a 206 wRC+. Judge's 11.2 Wins Above Replacement in MLB was nearly identical to Murakami's 11.0 WAR in NPB.

4) He'll need to get his strikeout numbers under control

Murakami at his best is more than just an elite home run hitter. He's an elite all-around hitter, who crushes home runs, draws tons of walks, doesn't chase bad pitches and gets on base at a high clip.

But since his historic 2022 season, Murakami's strikeout numbers have shot up, and his contact-hitting numbers have plummeted. He's gone through some big slumps and even power outages.

He's still been a top-tier home run hitter and a highly productive hitter overall -- Murakami hit over 30 homers in both 2023 and 2024, and was over 50% better than average offensively in both seasons. But his batting average dropped from .318 in 2022 to .256 in 2023 and .244 in 2024. His strikeout total spiked from 128 to 168 to 180 over that same period, and his strikeout rate increased from 20.9% to 28.1% to 29.5%.

That's more of an all-or-nothing profile than Murakami would like to have as a hitter. And it's a trend that Major League teams would certainly like to see reversed if Murakami is going to be a consistent All-Star type of player in MLB.

But Murakami is still so young, he has such exceptional production, and he has all the measurable tools to be a great power hitter in MLB. So if he does follow in his fellow Japanese stars' footsteps next season, it's worth believing in him to get back to the peak version of himself and become a star in the Major Leagues, too.