{"id":649279,"date":"2026-03-28T21:14:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T21:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/649279\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T21:14:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T21:14:23","slug":"updated-plan-for-red-sox-of-includes-unexpected-role-for-masataka-yoshida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/649279\/","title":{"rendered":"Updated plan for Red Sox OF includes unexpected role for Masataka Yoshida"},"content":{"rendered":"

CINCINNATI, Ohio \u2013 The first two Red Sox lineups<\/a> of the season featured Roman Anthony<\/a> in left field, Jarren Duran as designated hitter, and no Masataka Yoshida<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That will change soon, though, as manager Alex Cora continues to juggle five outfield options in Anthony, Duran, Yoshida, Wilyer Abreu and Ceddanne Rafaela.<\/p>\n

Rafaela Duran will play center when Rafaela gets his first day off.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not easy,\u201d Cora said before Saturday\u2019s game. \u201cWhoever thinks that this is easy, to move \u2018em around, they\u2019re wrong. They\u2019re wrong. I\u2019m going to say it like that, it\u2019s not that easy. But I\u2019ll make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though by Cora\u2019s own admission this musical chairs act complicates game-planning, he\u2019s confident it will serve the players well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everybody\u2019s going to benefit from it,\u201d he said. \u201cRoman\u2019s first full season. Jarren posts, he plays. Ceddanne, in August and September he has struggled, and Wilyer has been banged up, right? He hasn\u2019t played a full season yet. So I think this whole thing is going to help them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthony debuted last June and played 71 games before suffering a season-ending oblique strain the first week of September. Keeping him healthy is paramount for a lineup that isn\u2019t projected to be particularly powerful.<\/p>\n

Duran is coming off back-to-back seasons in which he played at least 157 of 162 regular-season games. Though he largely managed to hit consistently in the first and second halves of those seasons, he and Cora previously noted how much his legs wore down toward the end. Last year Duran stole 16 bases in the first half (95 starts) and eight in the second (57).<\/p>\n

Rafaela exceeded 152 games in each of the last two years, but hit .271 with a .788 OPS in 91 games before the 2025 All-Star break, and .214 with a .584 OPS in 64 games after.<\/p>\n

Abreu is coming off a 115-game season, preceded by a career-high 132 games the year before.<\/p>\n

Of the quintet, Yoshida figures to play the least. But in the immediate future, Cora making this roster work includes Yoshida playing three of the next five games, including at least one in the left field on the second leg of this two-city opening road trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re all good outfielders,\u201d Cora said. \u201cI think the only one who\u2019s average is Masa, and we believe in Houston he can play left field there.\u201d<\/p>\n

After signing a five-year contract with the Red Sox during the 2022-23 offseason, Yoshida played 87 games in left field in his 2023 MLB rookie year. He was worth minus-8 Outs Above Average and ranked in the 3rd MLB percentile in both Fielding Run Value and Arm Value.<\/p>\n

Due to a shoulder injury and surgery and the defensive dominance of his teammates, Yoshida has spent most of the last two seasons as the DH. He made one left field appearance in 2024, and played six games in the outfield last year after returning from the aforementioned offseason surgery.<\/p>\n

Yoshida has hit well in 10 career games at Houston\u2019s Daikin Park: 10 for 36 (.278) with two doubles, a home run, five runs and seven RBI. He\u2019s only manned the outfield there twice, though, during an August 2023 series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CINCINNATI, Ohio \u2013 The first two Red Sox lineups of the season featured Roman Anthony in left field,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2375],"tags":[858,5,141,48,2542,1396,604,792,4,89,2543,793,606],"class_list":{"0":"post-649279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-red-sox","8":"tag-alex-cora","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-boston-red-sox","12":"tag-bostonredsox","13":"tag-ceddanne-rafaela","14":"tag-jarren-duran","15":"tag-masataka-yoshida","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-red-sox","18":"tag-redsox","19":"tag-roman-anthony","20":"tag-wilyer-abreu"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116308873354409754","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649279","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=649279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}