CHICAGO — Even before you factor in that he speaks to the media through an interpreter, Munetaka Murakami is a man of few words.Fortunately for the White Sox, his actions have spoken pretty loudly over the first two months of the season.When Murakami spoke Saturday morning about the Grade 2 right hamstring strain he suffered the night before, one brief quote said it all.“It hurts,” he said through interpreter Kenzo Yagi. “It hurts.”He’s speaking for himself and his hamstring, but also for everyone around him, from his teammates who are getting used to winning to the Sox fans who were used to losing.Murakami, who has 20 homers, a .938 OPS and 41 RBIs in 57 games, has rejuvenated a moribund franchise with both his star power and actual power.He was on pace for 57 homers, 125 walks and 117 RBIs before the injury. For a team that has only made national headlines for really bad reasons in recent years, having a bold-faced name like Murakami land in their laps was a godsend for the Sox, who were 30-27 going into Saturday, the fourth-best record in a down year for the American League. If the season ended today, they’d play the Yankees in the wild-card series. Imagine predicting that two months ago.For anyone waiting for the Sox’s season to take that turn for the worse, though, this might be the moment. Murakami’s injury carries a recovery timeline of four to six weeks, though White Sox GM Chris Getz was optimistic Murakami would be out closer to a month. Still, a month without Murakami might seem like a year.“Yeah, it’s tough,” Sox manager Will Venable said. “I mean, obviously, he makes a massive impact on our group, on and off the field.”Then again, the Sox beat Detroit on Friday night on a walk-off homer from Miguel Vargas in the 10th inning. This team has a spark that might not be sustainable but is definitely enjoyable to watch. Fans are starting to believe again.On Saturday, the Sox called up former first-round pick Jacob Gonzalez to take Murakami’s spot on the roster. Gonzalez had 19 homers for Triple-A Charlotte, including four in his last three games.Venable said Gonzalez, a left-handed-hitting shortstop by trade who has been picking up other positions, will be the first baseman against right-handed pitchers. Gonzalez, the 15th pick of the 2023 draft out of Ole Miss, had plummeted down the team’s prospect rankings and looked like another Sox first-round bust, but he seems to have turned a corner this season. In the minors, at least. So now he gets a chance to prove he can do it where it counts.“I mean, he’s crushing baseballs, is what he’s been doing,” Venable said. “It’s really impressive. You get the reports every day, and it seems like there’s at least a homer and a couple of ribbies in there on a nightly basis. So he’s made some real adjustments with his swing and his approach, and it’s been paying off, so excited to see what it looks like here with us.”The Sox have struggled for, well, decades to draft and develop position-player talent, but Colson Montgomery is playing like a borderline All-Star at shortstop, and Sam Antonacci has looked as advertised as a sparkplug type of player. Other young guys acquired in trades like Chase Meidroth and Kyle Teel (who has been out all season with injuries) feel like keepers as well. Miguel Vargas, who came over from the Dodgers in the 2024 Michael Kopech deal, has joined Montgomery and Murakami to form a deadly 1-2-3 power punch. Vargas won Friday’s game with a two-run homer.At that point, Murakami was already out of the game and aware he was going to be on the shelf for a bit. But he was still locked in.“I was just really happy the team won,” he said. “I was watching TV, just hoping he would smack it.”Despite a language barrier, Murakami hasn’t been siloed in the corner of the clubhouse. He has been in the middle of the team’s dugout celebrations all season and will continue to be around the club, even on the road, as he rehabs his injury.Despite his success in Japan, major-league executives doubted Murakami’s ability to adjust to big-league pitching, which led to him signing a two-year, prove-it deal with a team that was the laughingstock of baseball just two years ago. People figured he’d play here for a year and then get traded before he walked as a free agent. At his introductory press conference, both his agent and Getz presented the arrangement as a short-term marriage that was win-win for both sides. And then the Sox started actually winning, which changed the conversations.No one thought that Murakami and the Sox would be this relevant two months into the season, but here they are. If they can survive his absence for a month or more — and that’s a Frank Thomas-sized “if” — we can really start to take this team seriously.“I never really thought about us being a losing team,” Murakami said. “It’s always about having that winning culture and going into games with that kind of mindset. I have that mindset every single day. We are here to win.”