Is there really a Japanese player better than Ohtani?
Best players on Team Japan that aren't Shohei Ohtani
WWW.MLB.COM
Mike Trout started talking to Shohei Ohtani about the World Baseball Classic in the middle of last season. And Ohtani, playing for Japan, told his Angels teammate, the Team USA captain, something that left Trout in disbelief.
"Talking to Shohei about that team, he tried to tell me that he
Yoshida was listed 4th...
The WBC will be the first look a lot of MLB fans get at Yoshida before Japan's contact king joins the Red Sox for the 2023 season. Yoshida is a two-time batting champion in NPB's Pacific League, but he's not just a slap hitter. He drives the ball.
The 29-year-old lefty swinger is one of the hardest hitters in Japan after Murakami. Not only did he bat .335 for Orix in 2022, he also slugged 21 homers and posted a 1.008 OPS. Yoshida hit over .320, slugged over .500 and had an OPS over .950 in each of his last five seasons in NPB. He averaged 22 home runs a year over that time.
Yoshida's plate discipline is also extraordinary. In 2022, he walked nearly twice as often as he struck out: 80 walks to only 41 strikeouts. And that's his worst ratio in the last three years, because in 2020 and '21, he had more than twice as many walks as K's (72 walks to 29 strikeouts in '20, 58 walks to 26 strikeouts in '21). That's 210 walks and only 96 strikeouts in the three seasons combined. Juan Soto-type numbers.