On the final day of the MLB Winter Meetings, the Red Sox went a long way in erasing the narrative that's come to hang over their offseason -- the one that suggested they were too frugal, or too timid, to make the moves necessary to re-make their roster for 2023 and beyond.
Hours after securing a two-year deal for closer Kenley Jansen, the Sox took the international route to pick up a five-year deal with outfielder Masataka Yoshida, valued at $90 million. In addition, the Red Sox will owe the Orix Buffaloes a fee of $15.5 million as part of MLB's newly configured posting system, which takes into account the value of the contract.
Yoshida, 29, received the largest amount ever given by an MLB club to a Japanese position player. Last year, the Chicago Cubs paid outfielder Seiya Suzuki $85 million over five seasons. The offer was aggressive enough to win the bidding on the first day Yoshida began the posting process.
''He’s someone that we like, we’ve spent a lot of time on,” Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said of Yoshida less than an hour before reports broke that the outfielder was Boston-bound. “Really, really good hitter, [gives a] quality at-bat and a great talent. I think first and foremost, when you look at a player like him, the quality of the at-bat stands out.”
Yoshida is a lefthanded-hitting on-base machine, having walked (80 times) almost twice as much as he struck out (41) last season for an incredible .447 on-base percentage.
There's a good chance Yoshida could serve as the club's leadoff hitter in 2023, as the team seeks to deepen its lineup and emphasize quality at-bats up and down the batting order. In the second half of 2021, it appeared the Sox had found their leadoff hitter in Kiké Hernandez. But Hernandez slumped significantly last year, then missed several months with a variety of injuries, as the Sox tried a number of different players at the top. None worked particularly well - the Sox finished the year with .295 on-base percentage out of the leadoff spot, ranking them 27th in that category among all MLB teams.
Yoshida can use the entire field and is particularly adept at hitting the ball the other way, which should make Fenway's left field wall an inviting target for line drives that turn into doubles. He hit 21 homers last year and in 2019 hit a career-best 29 homers. Still, his stock in trade is the ability to put the ball in play and get on base.
Defensively, Yoshida is considered an average defender, and while the original blueprint for the offseason might have called for the Sox to sign or trade for someone who could play right field -- and all the challenges that position represents at Fenway -- it would seem far more likely that with Hernandez in center, the Sox will put Yoshida in left and play Verdugo in right, where he played most of the second half of last season, and previously, in 2020.
Yoshida spent seven seasons with Orix and averaged a slash line of .327/.421/.539 with 161 doubles, seven triples, 133 homers and 467 RBIs. He sent his team to its first Japan Series championship in almost 30 years when he hit a game-winning, walk-off homer.
In all, it was an expensive day for the Sox, who handed out $122 million in salaries to Jansen and Yoshida, plus the $15.5 posting fee. The latter will not count toward the team's CBT numbers with its payroll.
The Red Sox have enlisted Japanese players before, led by starting pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who signed a landmark deal after the 2006 season with the club. The Sox have also featured a number of Japanese pitchers out of the bullpen, including Hideo Nomo, Hideki Okajima, Tomo Ohka, Junichi Sazawa, Takashi Saito, Hirokazu Sawamura and Koji Uehara.
But the team has not had a significant everyday position player from Japan before.
The team may not be done bidding for Japanese talent this winter, either, as the Sox have been among a handful of teams who have been linked to starting pitcher Kodai Senga. Unlike Yoshida, Senga is a traditional international free agent who will not have to go through the posting system. Senga has already visited some clubs in MLB, though it's unknown whether the Sox have been among those teams.