The Red Sox signed Masataka Yoshida to a five-year, $90- million deal this past offseason. In his first season in the Major Leagues, Yoshida is doing a great job of transitioning from the Nippon Professional Baseball League. He is hitting .315/.387/.491 through 243 PA. Here are my top three things to like about Yoshida, based on watching him these past few months.
If you prefer video breakdowns, check out this video:
1. Doesn’t Strike Out
Yoshida is primarily a contact hitter. He has an elite 10% strikeout rate, which puts him in the top 2% of the league. His bat to ball skills are his greatest strength. This is in part because of how short his swing is, which allows him to make adjustments throughout pitch flight to get to the ball when it crosses the plate.
He is especially elite against fastballs, and only has a 10% whiff rate against them. But that doesn’t mean pitchers can just sneak breaking and off-speed pitches by him.
In the video below, Taijuan Walker throws Yoshida an off-speed pitch to the lower-outer third of the zone, which Yoshida hits for a single.
This video also shows how fluid and simple Yoshida’s swing is. There isn’t a lot going on. It’s a quiet swing that allows him to just throw the bat out there to make contact. And as a contact-first hitter, Yoshida is able to reach any ball thrown in-zone. And he is able to do so regardless of the count.
Yoshida actually has an extremely patient approach, and swings at the first pitch only 12% of the time. This is 17% less often than Major League average. Even when Yoshida falls behind in the count, he is able to adjust and put a ball in play more often than striking out. His 87% zone-contact rate is 5% better than MLB average.
2. Uses the Whole Field
Yoshida uses the whole field when putting a ball in play. Here is his spray chart so far this season:
While this is a product of his contact-first approach, I wonder if he sometimes intentionally tries to see the ball a little longer into zone and drive it the other way.
In the video below, Tyler Glasnow throws a breaking pitch middle-in to Yoshida. A lot of the time we see hitters try to pull a pitch like this, but Yoshida waits and slaps it the other way.
By the time Yoshida swings, his weight has already shifted to the front half of his body. Ideally, you’d like to see a hitter time everything up together. But in this case, Yoshida sees that the pitch is going to break and keeps the barrel back
3. Above average power
Not only does Yoshida hit for contact, but he also has above average power. Yoshida’s hard-hit rate is 10% better than Major League average, at 46%.
And just because he is a contact-first hitter doesn’t mean he can’t use that power for the occasional home run.
In this video, Yoshida pulls a cutter from Luke Weaver down the right field line at Fenway for a home run.
Is there a catch?
Every hitter has their weakness. For Yoshida I would say his weakness is hitting too many ground balls. Among qualified hitters, Yoshida has the second highest ground ball rate in baseball at 59%. It seems like he is getting away with this for now, perhaps in part to how good his hard-hit rate has been. But this is something he will likely try to improve in the future.
What do you think of Yoshida so far?
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