![]() “You’re spot on with your focus on the two of them as elite under-23 players,” says a scouting director for an MLB team. No league or continent qualifiers are necessary: Murakami and Sasaki are the best young hitter and pitcher, respectively, in the world. “Nobody their age has ever done anything like what they’ve done, so expectations and hype through the roof,” reports Allen, who has covered Japanese baseball since the early 1990s. ![]() Their combinations of precocious skills and unparalleled production have, in the judgment of journalist Jim Allen, raised the excitement surrounding them to levels unmatched by any of the recent Japanese superstars who’ve subsequently strutted their stuff in the States. They’re having two of the best seasons in the nearly 90-year history of Japanese professional leagues-and they’re doing it at ridiculously early ages. Going by performance relative to their leagues, Murakami is approximately peak Barry Bonds, and Sasaki is approximately peak Pedro Martínez. Roki Sasaki, starting pitcher for the Pacific League’s Chiba Lotte Marines, almost pitched back-to-back perfect games in April-he was pulled eight innings into the second perfect start, having retired a record 52 consecutive batters-and has exhibited unprecedented per-batter dominance overall. Munetaka Murakami, third baseman for the Central League’s Yakult Swallows, is leading in every Triple Crown category and matching Judge homer for homer as he nears Japan’s single-season home run record. Japan’s major leagues, known as Nippon Professional Baseball, are home to two phenoms whose accomplishments and projections compare favorably to any of their Stateside contemporaries’. Which makes it all the more amazing that the year’s most sensational statistical feats might not come from the majors-the American majors, at least. (In that event, one more strong start by Spencer Strider would bring the combined pitcher-plus-position-player total of four-WAR rookies to six, the most since 1934.) Almost every major end-of-season awards race will feature a runner-up who would win handily in many other years. On the opposite end of the experience spectrum, four rookie position players-Julio Rodríguez, Adley Rutschman, Michael Harris II, and Steven Kwan-have cleared the four-bWAR threshold, tied for the most ever Jeremy Peña may make it a record five. Albert Pujols, on the path to 700 homers, looks like his old-scratch that, young self, and Justin Verlander is angling for the lowest ERA by a qualified, 36-and-up AL/NL starter not named Cy Young. Judge and Paul Goldschmidt are contending for Triple Crowns. ![]() Shohei Ohtani is performing weekly two-way wonders for the second straight year. Aaron Judge is aiming for 60-plus homers and lapping both leagues in long balls. More so than most seasons, the 2022 MLB campaign is a congeries of remarkable individual exploits.
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