he finally spoke<\/a> on the rumors.<\/p>\n\u201cThat\u2019s something I didn\u2019t really experience back in Japan, trades don\u2019t really happen that much, as often as they do here,\u201d Yoshida said through a translator on Saturday, per The Athletic\u2019s Jen McCaffrey. \u201cIt\u2019s something new, but if you trade somebody, both (teams) have to agree, so that\u2019s going to be tough. It\u2019s part of the business, but it\u2019s something that\u2019s new to me after I got here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yoshida has a .282 batting average in the big leagues for the Red Sox, but just 29 home runs in 303 games. He had four 20-plus homer seasons in Japan, but the power has not translated. He will not be easy to trade thanks to his contract, but at this time, it does not look like he will have a consistent role.<\/p>\n
Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n
If the Red Sox were to trade him, they would likely need to eat much of the remaining money in his deal. Keeping him, and forcing him into the lineup would take at-bats away from Anthony, Duran, Abreu and Rafaela.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Right now, there\u2019s not much the Red Sox can do. They can hold on to him as insurance against an injury while they look for a trade. Yoshida can prove himself or increase his value with a strong spring and World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Boston Red Sox are getting ready for the season, and Masataka Yoshida\u2019s future is still up in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,792,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-572920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-masataka-yoshida","10":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116071367080317352","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}