As the calendar turns from April to May, Masataka Yoshida remains something of an afterthought in the world of the Red Sox. As he enters the third season of the five-year, $90 million contract he signed with Boston in December 2022, the 31-year-old remains sidelined by a laborious recovery from labrum surgery and faces an uncertain future with the club when he is fully healthy. While his team has forged a 17-15 record in the early part of the season, Yoshida has had a largely unseen existence in Fort Myers, throwing on the back fields of Fenway South with team trainers and his translator, Yutaro Yamaguchi.
Is Yoshida in some sort of baseball exile? Are the Red Sox simply kicking the can down the road when it comes to his future? To many on the outside, it looks that way. But a combination of factors related to Yoshida’s health and the construction of Boston’s roster have led to the unique spot the Japan native finds himself in now. And for now, the plan is to get him fully healthy and go from there.
“I think there’s no reason for somebody who we think can help us to be stashed anywhere other than Fenway Park,” said chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.
As manager Alex Cora revealed earlier this week in Toronto, Yoshida — who underwent a right shoulder labral repair on October 3 in Boston — has hit plenty of speed bumps as he has ramped up his throwing program in recent weeks. While he can swing the bat with no issue — as evidenced by a .286 average and a homer in 35 spring training plate appearances — the shoulder simply isn’t strong enough for him to throw in a game setting. The setbacks have been enough for team trainers to want to take another look, so Yoshida is tentatively scheduled to travel to Boston later this week to be examined by the Red Sox’ medical staff. The expectation is that Yoshida will be given either a cortisone shot or a PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injection, according to a baseball source. The latter could require a shutdown for a week, with the recovery time for a cortisone shot thought to be shorter.
“Hitting is ahead,” noted Breslow. “He has no discomfort when he is hitting. But as it relates to the throwing program, there have been some hurdles.
“He’s going through an interval throwing program. He’s gotten out to 120 feet. But the intensity has been really, really light, so he is not really able to add enough intensity to make this reasonable to play in games, and that’s obviously important. If we were just evaluating by distance, it might be a little bit deceiving here because the intensity is not game-like at all.”
It’s not often that a player participates in spring games, like Yoshida did as Boston’s designated hitter, then begins the year with a prolonged injured list stint. But once the Red Sox signed Alex Bregman to play third base and shifted Rafael Devers to DH (Yoshida’s position in 2024), things changed dramatically when it came to Yoshida. At-bats are not available in the DH spot now due to Devers’ new existence and the Sox aren’t about to carry a bench player who can’t help them defensively. Therefore, they communicated to Yoshida that they’ll need him to be fully ready to play the outfield when he does return.
“He was signed as an outfielder,“ said Breslow. ”We’d like for him to be able to play in the outfield. That’s obviously a path to at-bats. I think most important is the fact that he has not completely recovered from the injury in a way that allows him to take on the full role.
“He needs to be completely healthy because we don’t see any reason why he can’t play in the outfield. I know in the second half of 2023, which was before I came over, it seemed like he was making some real progress getting acclimated to playing in the outfield, especially at Fenway, and some of the underlying defensive metrics were trending in the right direction. He’s shown the ability to manage the strike zone, put together good at-bats. I think we saw in spring training when he was completely healthy and for stretches last year, his ability to impact the game at the plate. We think that he’s more than capable of playing in the field as well.”
MLB rules also complicate Yoshida’s situation. Injured major league position players are limited to just 20 rehab games before they must be activated, and the Red Sox aren’t going to start that clock by sending Yoshida to an affiliate just to hit. Per the terms of his contract, Yoshida would have to consent to being optioned to the minors as well. There are no stipulations on his ability to participate in drills in Fort Myers, where he’s taking at-bats against injured starter Kutter Crawford this week.
“Hitting is simply just outpacing the recovery from surgery as it relates to throwing,” said Breslow. “We’re still within reasonable timetable for recovery, but just, the throwing hasn’t progressed as quickly as his ability to hit has.”
Medically, Yoshida’s case is not dissimilar to that of Ha-Seong Kim, who also underwent shoulder surgery last October. Kim, now with Tampa Bay, is expected to return to the Rays’ lineup in either June or July. It’s worth noting, however, that Kim is principally an infielder, and the frequency and intensity of those throws could help explain the longer recovery time.
Injury concerns aside, there are those in Yoshida’s camp who wonder how the left-handed hitter fits into the Red Sox’ plans when healthy. With Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, Kristian Campbell and Rob Refsnyder ably handling the outfield and top prospect Roman Anthony knocking on the door, the outfield group is a strong one. That surplus was part of the reason Yoshida shifted to DH a year ago; that’s obviously no longer an option with Devers positioned there.
The most likely scenario, some believe, is for the team to wait until Yoshida is activated and attempt to trade him elsewhere after Boston discussed him in trades in each of the last two winters. But Yoshida’s trade value is negligible, given the amount of money remaining (approximately $54 million) on his five-year deal, his sub-par 2024 season and the current uncertainty surrounding his shoulder. The Red Sox would have to be willing to take back a sizable chunk of the contract to facilitate a deal. An outright release, one baseball source surmised, is, at present, highly unlikely. If Yoshida were to clear waivers and be outrighted off the 40-man roster, the Red Sox would still be responsible for his annual $18 million competitive balance tax (CBT) hit; the loophole that guarded against having players like Rusney Castillo count against that total was closed years ago.
The reserved Yoshida has said little about his future with the Red Sox, other than to say things were out of his control and that as long as he was still with the club, he’d play where the team wants him. Breslow said the communication with Yoshida has been strong.
“I have regular conversations with Masa, with Yutaro (his translator) and when Masa has been in Boston, I see him almost every day,” Breslow said. “We’ve had great communication. He understands what full recovery looks like. If anything, it’s probably just frustration that the shoulder with respect to throwing hasn’t come along as quickly as his ability to swing has.
“You want to be as honest as you can with players and Masa is unbelievably respectful, loyal, thoughtful and a great teammate. When we told him that we want to make sure that he’s completely healthy and that being completely healthy means being able to play in the box and being able to play in the outfield, he understood that was a path to at-bats. The conversation and communication has been open and honest and, like I said, incredibly respectful.”
As the days and weeks pass, the future of Yoshida in a Red Sox uniform gets murkier and murkier. It’s not a perfect situation for either side. But the club, at least publicly, isn’t signaling that its ready to give up on a player who has hit 285 with 25 homers, 128 RBIs and a .775 OPS in his first 248 big league games.
“Guys use the term ‘professional hitter,’ right? But that’s exactly what he is,” Breslow said. “He’s obviously very accomplished in Japan and we’ve seen when he’s able to get the ball in the air and impact the ball the way that he’s capable of, he can change a game. We all think about the the home run that he hit in Yankee Stadium and stretches where he was our most productive offensive player. This guy is a really good hitter and he’s going to be a really good major league hitter.”
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