ANAHEIM, Calif. — Munetaka Murakami ripped a ball down the right-field line in the sixth inning Monday against the Los Angeles Angels and raced to second for his first major-league double.
“It was going to come sooner or later, so I’m really happy about the double result,” he said through an interpreter.
Murakami has been more accustomed to hitting the ball over the fence, which he continued to do Monday. He and Miguel Vargas hit back-to-back home runs in the fourth, leading the Chicago White Sox to a 6-0 victory in front of 26,262 at Angel Stadium.
Murakami matched Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees for the major-league lead with his 14th home run, a two-run blast to center against Angels starter José Soriano.
“He continues to impress you with the power,” manager Will Venable said. “We saw a double today, which was also great. And, yeah, he obviously has tremendous power, puts himself in a really good position to get to that power by making good swing decisions.”
Vargas followed with a home run to right-center, his seventh of the season.
It was the third time this year the Sox have hit back-to-back home runs, and Murakami has been involved in all three. He, Vargas and Colson Montgomery hit three home runs in a row April 21 at Arizona. Murakami and Montgomery went back-to-back April 27 against the Angels at Rate Field.
Monday was more of the same from Murakami, who went 3-for-4 with a walk and three runs.
Sox starter Davis Martin also had another dominant outing. The right-hander allowed five hits in seven scoreless innings, lowering his ERA to 1.64.
“(He) just continues to throw strikes,” Venable said. “He made some adjustments from the last time (against the Angels on April 28, when he allowed one run in 5 2/3 innings), some different looks. We saw more changeups and four-seamers today. Ton of strikes, he was effective in the zone. Super efficient.”
Martin had a career-high 10 strikeouts while improving to 5-1.
“It was awesome, executing at a high level, getting ahead, attacking the zone,” Martin said. “Kind of feeling free out there, almost. (Catcher) Drew (Romo) and I had a good plan going into it, especially after him catching me the last time we played the Angels.
“We had a decent idea of what we wanted to do and the adjustments we wanted to make from the prior game, and we executed at a high level.”
He received run support early. The Sox took advantage of a pair of walks during a two-run first.
The first two batters, Sam Antonacci and Murakami, walked. Two strikeouts followed, but Chase Meidroth came through with an RBI single to center. Andrew Benintendi followed with another run-scoring single, making it 2-0. Benintendi finished with four singles.
Antonacci singled with one out in the fourth. Murakami followed with the 429-foot, two-run home run. Vargas made it 5-0 with his home run.
“Really good at-bats throughout the lineup and guys hitting the ball hard, guys not chasing,” Venable said.
Soriano saw his ERA go from 0.84 to 1.74 after allowing five runs on eight hits in four innings.
“Obviously he’s a very good pitcher, but as we faced him last time (three runs on six hits in five innings April 28 at Rate Field during a 5-2 Sox win), we were really able to select on the pitches, see the variety of pitches that we had in the past,” Murakami said. “We’re very happy that we got the results like today.”
The Sox (17-18) finished with a season-high 16 hits while winning for the sixth time in seven games.
“If we keep taking these types of at-bats, quality at-bats every day as a team, I think we are going to have these types of results very often,” Vargas said.
