Masataka Yoshida Is An $18 Million Roster Roadblock

The Red Sox have a Masataka Yoshida-sized elephant in their lineup. As currently constructed, the team has five outfielders on the major-league roster: Roman Anthony, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, Jarren Duran, and Yoshida. That doesn’t count bench options Nick Sogard and Nate Eaton, either. We can pencil in some combination of Anthony, Rafaela, Abreu, and Duran into the starting outfield spots on a game-by-game basis, but that leaves Yoshida as the primary DH option as we get closer to the start of spring training. It’s a role he’s familiar with after he was finally taken off the injured list in 2025, but it’s not a role he thrived in.

Yoshida appeared in 55 games last season and slashed .266/.307/.388 with four home runs, 26 RBIs, an 88 wRC+, and a -0.1 fWAR. When he was signed before the 2023 season, we were pitched on one of the better power hitters in the NPB and told that once he settled into the style of American baseball, his power would follow. So far, though, it has yet to materialize in any meaningful way. He can put the bat to the ball, but that’s not what you want from your primary DH. If there was a right-handed hitter who could platoon in the DH role with him then you could start to make a case for keeping Yoshida around, but that'd be a questionable use of roster space and resources. The Red Sox are going to have to figure out the Yoshida problem sooner rather than later.

The problem at DH will only get worse if Triston Casas is healthy and playing well early in the season. There are question marks all over Casas, and rightfully so, but he has the biggest potential to bring 30+ home run power to this lineup as soon as this season. Maybe he'll start the year with Triple-A Worcester, but if he plays well, he'll be on the first bus back to Boston. They’ve traded for Willson Contreras to be the solution at first base this season, which should pencil Casas in as the primary DH when he returns to the lineup. He could be a passable first baseman in the future, but his path to playing time, and likely his path to success here in Boston, will come at the DH spot in the lineup in 2026. Having Yoshida around makes it all the more difficult to figure that out.

It's telling that Craig Breslow has made two trades with the person who signed Yoshida to a deal in Boston, Chaim Bloom and the Cardinals, and instead of taking even part of Yoshida’s contract back in a trade, they’ve opted to send money to the Red Sox instead. There is no actual market for Yoshida in professional baseball right now, unless the Red Sox move him in a pure salary dump by attaching a decent prospect to him. That’s possible, but the organization has fewer of those high ranked prospects after the trades with the Cardinals (and Pirates) earlier in the offseason.

What will likely happen is that the Red Sox are going to pay Masataka Yoshida $18 million over the next two seasons to sit on the bench. In 2026, don’t be surprised if Yoshida plays once per week, and perhaps less if the quartet of starting outfielders are all hot at the same time. Breslow has said that he’d like to rotate players through the DH spot in the lineup and having four starting-caliber outfielders allows for Alex Cora to do just that on a matchup specific basis. Yoshida is a popular guy in the clubhouse and with the fans, but he’s a roadblock to the team being able to operate at full capacity.