“It’s a big, risky bet — but one the Red Sox were willing to take.”
Masataka Yoshida, 30, acquired by the Boston Red Sox ) decided to ignore the defense problem.
On the 9th (Korean time), American media Mass Live summarized what Boston had done this winter and checked how far it had reached its 10 goals.
The sixth thing mentioned was the reinforcement of the main outfielder. Two spots in Boston’s outfield are clear. Putting Kike Hernandez in center field and Alex Verdugo in right field. “The cleanest choice was to move Verdugo, who had deteriorated defensively last season, to left field and add a right fielder,” Mathlive said. “But Boston president Chaim Bloom made a creative choice.” 스포츠토토
The result of that creative choice was Yoshida, a native of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) Orix Buffaloes. Last month, Boston signed a 5-year, 90 million dollar (approximately 112.2 billion won) contract with Yoshida, who announced his advance to the major leagues through the posting system.
Yoshida is a long-distance hitter with a batting average of 0.326, 135 home runs and 474 RBIs, an on-base percentage of 0.419, a slugging percentage of 0.538, and an OPS of 0.957 over seven seasons. He has slugging power to the extent that he has four seasons with more than 20 home runs, including 29 home runs in one year (2019), but his strength is his excellent contact ability and pioneering vision, so he picked out 427 walks while striking out 307 times.
The problem is the outfield defense, which is rated as the worst even though the left fielder position has less importance on defense. There are also many eyes that see him as a designated hitter in the major leagues because of his poor evaluation in Japan. As a direct example, after Yoshida’s signing was announced, Boston’s rival team management criticized him for “giving too much money.”
However, the media marked ‘COMPLETE’ in the ‘main outfield reinforcement’ item. “Boston thinks Yoshida has a player who can play leadoff and play left field every day, even though Yoshida is rated as having a below-average defense,” Mathlive said. “, conveyed the atmosphere inside.