Pregame notes: Munetaka Murakami is in the MLB Home Run Derby

PHILADELPHIA -- It was an assumption, a poor one, by this reporter, that the scrum around Miguel Vargas' table during All-Star Game media availability would be less crowded, fierce and chaotic than the furor surrounding Munetaka Murakami.

Apologies to all Spanish-language sports media, I was not adequately familiar with your game.

But the process of being boxed out by 300 Spanish-speaking Charles Oakleys gave a view to Vargas' relentless dedication to his teammate. Reporter after Spanish language reporter quizzed him about his pick to win Monday night's MLB Home Run Derby, and regularly Vargas encountered shock that he seemed--for this specific event--more loyal to the White Sox than the concept Pan-Latin unity.

Really? Over Junior Caminero?

"I know, right?" Vargas replied, with an intonation that he was aware how much he was cutting against the grain.

"I think he's going to win this Home Run Derby," Vargas said of Murakami. "I need to make sure his water temperature and Gatorade temperature is fine, and that the towels are dry enough for him."

"I honestly think Mune's got a really, really good chance of winning this," said Tristan Peters. "I've seen his BP, it's incredible. Obviously there's some other talented players out there too, but I've really been looking forward to watching him."

The format of the Derby has changed once more, because who in baseball likes continuity that makes comparing performance to past eras feasible? The time element has been completely removed in favor of a set limit on swings per round, and the initial concern is that it will make more boring than any competitive impact.

But the pivot away from a format that requires endurance, reads as a move that will tilt the playing field back in favor of the purest bat speed monsters.

Although MLB.com's Mike Petriello disagrees, and the Dinger Score that he helped put together, which also gives weight to contact quality, puts Murakami more in the middle of the pack among contestants. Still, every objective measurement to predict a fluky and unpredictable event seems to tag Caminero as the favorite, so Vargas will really have to kill it in his self-appointed hype man role to push Murakami to the podium.

"I'm trying to do some Japanese hypes, I need to help him," Vargas said.

Murakami seems like he has his own ways of hyping himself up.

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Monday afternoon probably brought Peters in touch with more media attention than he's ever encountered in his career. Just the All-Star honors alone have his phone backlogged in a way from which he might never recover.

"I'm sorry to them because I haven't been able to respond to everybody," Peters said. "There's been a lot going on."

A lot of unread text messages on his phone.

"A lot."

If there was any chance that Peters wasn't going to be swamped with questions about his Savannah Bananas past, Murakami snuffed it out by doing the Macarena with him in the White Sox dugout during the game where he hit for the cycle, and pointing attention to him again on Monday.

"The dance came out from something extraordinary from TP that you can imagine coming from," Murakami said via interpreter. "I really had fun watching him."

Peters has clarified that he played for the Bananas when they were still primarily a collegiate summer league team, but also indicated there was plenty of dancing.

"It was a fraction of what it is now, it was the roots basically of what it is now," Peters said. "We did the dances, we did TikToks, now it's just more choreographed. Now it's Banana Ball, and it was baseball back then. It's quite different, but we still had the same foundation."

With All-Star nod now on his resume, Peters is overqualified for the Bananas from a baseball perspective, but could he keep up with the current dancing demands of Banana Ball?

"I don't know if I could handle but, you know, maybe," Peters replied.

He's been full of surprises all year, after all.