What Went Wrong With The Masataka Yoshida Signing & Can Craig Breslow Fix It?

Welp, it’s (almost) over. After a summer filled with hope and surprisingly competent play, the 2024 Red Sox have come crashing back down to earth with a genuinely pitiful second-half performance. As we approach what is almost certainly a third straight season without October baseball, I will attempt to pick up the pieces and try my best to answer two simple questions: What went wrong, and what can the Red Sox do about it?

Each piece will focus on a different shortcoming in the roster, management, or front-office decisions that have contributed to the mediocrity. We will begin with a much-maligned free agency signing who has thus far proved his critics right.

Masataka Yoshida’s Shortcomings

When former CBO Chaim Bloom inked Japanese superstar Masataka Yoshida to a 5-year, $90 million deal, the public reaction to the deal was swift and decisive. Many who had seen Yoshida play in Japan did not doubt his elite bat-to-ball skills but viewed him as a massive overpay due to his lack of power, poor speed, and defensive limitations. Keith Law described him as a fourth outfielder, while rival executives said things such as “I have no words” and “We thought he was worth around half of that.”

As we near the end of his second MLB season with nearly 1000 MLB at-bats, it is clear that the critics' concerns were warranted. As expected, Yoshida has been one of the best contact hitters in the league, striking out in just 13.6% of his plate appearances and posting a solid .287 batting average. He is a competent, above-average major-league hitter, and many teams would love to have a 110 OPS+ bat with excellent plate discipline numbers.

The issue, however, is that Yoshida’s aforementioned skill set is a terrible fit with the current Red Sox roster. The lineup is overloaded with competent left-handed bats, often running out six or even seven lefties on a single night. Yoshida’s decent production adds little value to a lineup that has many better options, especially considering that Yoshida is completely neutralized against fellow southpaws (.218/.289/.310).

With his strengths seemingly unneeded, Yoshida’s weaknesses are thrown into the spotlight, and there are many to choose from. He doesn’t hit the ball especially hard, evidenced by both the surface-level numbers (24 career homers in 232 games) and the advanced ones (28th percentile average exit velocity, 29th percentile hard-hit percentage). His 19th-percentile sprint speed renders him a non-factor on the basepaths, and his left-field defense was so poor in his rookie season that the Red Sox have not put him in the field this season. For a team that has struggled to hit left-handed pitching, values speed and chaos on the bases, and has multiple players who could benefit from the occasional DH day, Yoshida’s skillset is disastrous.

In trying to imagine the 2025 Red Sox roster, I have yet to imagine a scenario where Yoshida is a part of it. This team is desperate for a right-handed bat, and first base, third base, and at least two outfield spots will already be committed to lefties. In addition, having the option to play Rafael Devers at DH occasionally would help him stay healthy deeper into the season and allow the Red Sox to put their best defensive alignment on the field more often. Yoshida’s presence makes both of those tasks much harder.

One of the hardest things for a baseball executive is to admit when a contract is a mistake. Nobody wants to deal with the fact that they just committed millions of dollars to a player who wasn’t worth the money. Yet the task should be easier for Craig Breslow, considering he was not the one who made the ill-fated decision, and he should be smart enough to realize that Yoshida is ill-fitted for the roster he is trying to build. Even if it requires eating a portion of the 3-years, $54 million remaining on the contract, the Red Sox need to move on from Yoshida if they are serious about building the best roster for 2025.