Masataka Yoshida is in the fourth year of the five-year, $90 million contract with the Red Sox. Perhaps he and the money he\u2019s owed will get moved as part of a larger transaction in the next few weeks, but either way, it feels like we\u2019re approaching a point where a decision has to be made about his future with the club. Here\u2019s a handful of other items to consider:<\/p>\n
1) Yoshida has stunk at the plate since Roman Anthony\u2019s injury opened up about as much consistent playing time as he could possibly get on this roster given the huge outfield and DH logjam. Since Anthony went on the IL a little over a month ago at the end of the Detroit series, Yoshida is batting .181 with a .528 OPS.<\/p>\n
2) It\u2019s been noted before, but Yoshida also can\u2019t field, can\u2019t throw, isn\u2019t a fast baserunner, and will turn 33 next month, so if he\u2019s also not going to hit, what exactly is there for him to do on this roster?<\/p>\n
3) Yoshida\u2019s OPS has gotten worse every single season:<\/p>\n
4) Early this week, the Red Sox called up Nate Eaton, who splits the majority of his playing time between the outfield and DH. This means we have yet another guy who plugs into the OF\/DH logjam; and on top of that, Eaton is right handed, so replacing Yoshida with his bat would give some desperately needed balance to the lineup.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is this: Yoshida is an aging player who,while excellent in Japan, isn\u2019t coming down from a very high place here even when he was half decent in 2023 and 2024. This means he doesn\u2019t fit on this roster whether you believe the Red Sox should still be pushing for the third Wild Card in 2026, or if you believe they should sell everything not nailed down to the floor. He\u2019s unproductive right now, and there\u2019s no long-term upside in the future.<\/p>\n
This one hurts, because by all accounts Yoshida seems like a lovely human being off the field, and is one of the few guys on this team who has the composure to handle a high leverage at bat on it. But this season is supposed to hurt. You don\u2019t get twelve games under .500 without consequences reaching all corners of the clubhouse, and for Yoshida, the clock appears to be ticking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Masataka Yoshida is in the fourth year of the five-year, $90 million contract with the Red Sox. Perhaps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2375],"tags":[5,141,48,2542,4,89,1322,2543],"class_list":["post-723235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boston-red-sox","tag-baseball","tag-boston","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-bostonredsox","tag-mlb","tag-red-sox","tag-red-sox-analysis","tag-redsox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116731876413153727","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723235","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=723235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}