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Red Sox Sign OF Masataka Yoshida
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Post by pappyman99 on Jan 14, 2024 9:28:46 GMT -5
Best player and best hitter are not the same thing. You know that… Yoshida is a damn good hitter he is just a DH not a left fielder. If you stuck prime David Ortiz* in left, he’d have a lousy WAR too. *obviously prime Ortiz was a better hitter than Yoshida, but he was also a worse fielder, and incapable of playing left. My point is don’t play guys out of position and Yoshida is out of position in left. Where is he *in* position? Just a DH does not do them much good vis-vis FA market. Who is left who is not at least mostly a DH? Especially when the board would rightfully freak out if we signed Soler to a 4 year $72 million deal.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Jan 14, 2024 10:18:59 GMT -5
Yoshida made his salary on offense by both BRef and Fangraphs last season. The defense is what dragged that value down.
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Post by pappyman99 on Jan 14, 2024 10:33:18 GMT -5
Yoshida made his salary on offense by both BRef and Fangraphs last season. The defense is what dragged that value down. But still a 109 wrc+ at DH is nothing great. We can literally get better in Soler who would seem happy at this point to even get a 2 year deal
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nomar
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Posts: 10,930
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Post by nomar on Jan 14, 2024 10:35:20 GMT -5
Yoshida made his salary on offense by both BRef and Fangraphs last season. The defense is what dragged that value down. But still a 109 wrc+ at DH is nothing great. We can literally get better in Soler who would seem happy at this point to even get a 2 year deal League average DH was 110 wRC+
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Post by bluechip on Jan 14, 2024 10:36:07 GMT -5
Yoshida made his salary on offense by both BRef and Fangraphs last season. The defense is what dragged that value down. But still a 109 wrc+ at DH is nothing great. We can literally get better in Soler who would seem happy at this point to even get a 2 year deal Yoshida projects to have a better wrc+ than solar this upcoming year. (120 vs 119)
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Post by pappyman99 on Jan 14, 2024 10:55:22 GMT -5
Yoshida made his salary on offense by both BRef and Fangraphs last season. The defense is what dragged that value down. But still a 109 wrc+ at DH is nothing great. We can literally get better in Soler who would seem happy at this point to even get a 2 year deal I think that lands comfortably in the realm of “nothing great”
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Post by orion09 on Jan 14, 2024 11:01:27 GMT -5
Yoshida had a 136 wRC+ in the first half, and a 73 wRC+ in the second half, when he was rolling over on ground balls and looked totally gassed. If you think he’s closer to his whole season wRC+ of 109 I can understand wanting to trade him. Personally, I believe he’s closer to his first half performance and have hope that he’ll come back with the necessary conditioning and adjustments to sustain that success. Fangraphs seemingly agrees, projecting him for a 120 wRC+ and 1.9 WAR. That player would be well worth the money.
Edit: Incandenza beat me to it
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Post by pappyman99 on Jan 14, 2024 11:15:03 GMT -5
Yoshida had a 136 wRC+ in the first half, and a 73 wRC+ in the second half, when he was rolling over on ground balls and looked totally gassed. If you think he’s closer to his whole season wRC+ of 109 I can understand wanting to trade him. Personally, I believe he’s closer to his first half performance and have hope that he’ll come back with the necessary conditioning and adjustments to sustain that success. Fangraphs seemingly agrees, projecting him for a 120 wRC+ and 1.9 WAR. That player would be well worth the money. Edit: Incandenza beat me to it He was also projected for what a 131 wRC+ last year? Listen he can improve but I feel like people here would be mad if we traded him and signed Soler to a two year deal But logically that’s the most efficient thing we can do right now with that position no?
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cdj
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Posts: 14,314
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Post by cdj on Jan 14, 2024 11:16:42 GMT -5
I just wanna know why Yoshida stopped walking, that is concerning to me. I feel like fatigue shouldn’t impact that
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Post by notstarboard on Jan 14, 2024 11:27:27 GMT -5
I just wanna know why Yoshida stopped walking, that is concerning to me. I feel like fatigue shouldn’t impact that First base is soooo far awayyyyyy... The dugout is way closer 🤤 But seriously, I could see something like: fatigue worsens performance at the plate > player starts pressing > player walks less.
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Post by kwodes on Jan 14, 2024 11:32:39 GMT -5
I just wanna know why Yoshida stopped walking, that is concerning to me. I feel like fatigue shouldn’t impact that First base is soooo far awayyyyyy... The dugout is way closer 🤤 But seriously, I could see something like: fatigue worsens performance at the plate > player starts pressing > player walks less. usually, if a hitter is fatigued, they feel they need to start the swing a little sooner, which leads to making earlier swing decisions, which leads to chasing more, swinging more, and weaker contact.
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Post by jbuttah on Jan 14, 2024 11:41:26 GMT -5
First base is soooo far awayyyyyy... The dugout is way closer 🤤 But seriously, I could see something like: fatigue worsens performance at the plate > player starts pressing > player walks less. usually, if a hitter is fatigued, they feel they need to start the swing a little sooner, which leads to making earlier swing decisions, which leads to chasing more, swinging more, and weaker contact. Definitely. also when you start pressing you try to quicken your swing by muscling the bat through the zone which has the effect of slowing your bat by quite a bit. I fully expect Yoshida to finish next year with a >120 wRC+, and wouldn't be at all surprised if he had >130 wRC+ the next two years.
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Post by awalkinthepark on Jan 14, 2024 11:46:02 GMT -5
Wanted to move the Masa discussion back to his thread. There are a lot of different opinions on him on here on what we have in him going forward. I was poking around and found this to be a striking similarity. Here are the first year numbers for Masa and Hideki Matsui, who also came to the US at age 29:
Matsui followed this up by hitting .298/.390/.522 in 2004, a 140 wRC+, and putting up 3 fWAR. For his career with the Yankees he hit .292/.370/.482 and put up 12.6 fWAR.
This is exactly the player the Red Sox hoped for when they signed Masa and I think he can be this guy. It would be a huge mistake to trade him away after a subpar first year. If they traded him and he had a follow up like Matsui we would all be kicking ourselves.
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Post by scottysmalls on Jan 14, 2024 11:46:19 GMT -5
If Soler was a year and a half younger (i.e., Yoshida's age), a 4/72 contract would be a little high, but not outrageous or anything. And I don't know how you can look at Yoshida's season - a 140 wRC+ through July 25th, then tailing off with a 200 PA megaslump at the end of the season - and not think there's at least tantalizing upside there. That’s fair, but you can equally say everything else should give you pause. If he was an average fielder, I’d be all aboard. But he’d be a mediocre DH, blocking that position for a bigger banger. You are left with the unappealing choice: terrible LF defense or light at DH. That's assuming they could just find a DH better than a 120 wRC+ which is a lot harder to do than you would think. None of this year's free agents outside of Ohtani project that well.
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Post by wcsoxfan on Jan 14, 2024 11:59:21 GMT -5
First base is soooo far awayyyyyy... The dugout is way closer 🤤 But seriously, I could see something like: fatigue worsens performance at the plate > player starts pressing > player walks less. usually, if a hitter is fatigued, they feel they need to start the swing a little sooner, which leads to making earlier swing decisions, which leads to chasing more, swinging more, and weaker contact. Do you have any statistical evidence or reference material to support this?
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cdj
Veteran
Posts: 14,314
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Post by cdj on Jan 14, 2024 12:01:10 GMT -5
usually, if a hitter is fatigued, they feel they need to start the swing a little sooner, which leads to making earlier swing decisions, which leads to chasing more, swinging more, and weaker contact. Do you have any statistical evidence or reference material to support this? I don’t see how that would be possible, the theory is plausible though imo
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Post by scottysmalls on Jan 14, 2024 12:04:30 GMT -5
Wanted to move the Masa discussion back to his thread. There are a lot of different opinions on him on here on what we have in him going forward. I was poking around and found this to be a striking similarity. Here are the first year numbers for Masa and Hideki Matsui, who also came to the US at age 29:
Matsui followed this up by hitting .298/.390/.522 in 2004, a 140 wRC+, and putting up 3 fWAR. For his career with the Yankees he hit .292/.370/.482 and put up 12.6 fWAR.
This is exactly the player the Red Sox hoped for when they signed Masa and I think he can be this guy. It would be a huge mistake to trade him away after a subpar first year. If they traded him and he had a follow up like Matsui we would all be kicking ourselves.
Seiya Suzuki, Ha Seong Kim, Kosuke Fukudome also all improved substantially year 1 - year 2. Other guys like Nori Aoki and Ichiro were pretty much flat from year 1. There's not a lot of starting-caliber Asian position players who have transitioned to MLB to look at though.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Jan 14, 2024 12:13:40 GMT -5
Wanted to move the Masa discussion back to his thread. There are a lot of different opinions on him on here on what we have in him going forward. I was poking around and found this to be a striking similarity. Here are the first year numbers for Masa and Hideki Matsui, who also came to the US at age 29: Matsui followed this up by hitting .298/.390/.522 in 2004, a 140 wRC+, and putting up 3 fWAR. For his career with the Yankees he hit .292/.370/.482 and put up 12.6 fWAR. This is exactly the player the Red Sox hoped for when they signed Masa and I think he can be this guy. It would be a huge mistake to trade him away after a subpar first year. If they traded him and he had a follow up like Matsui we would all be kicking ourselves.
I'll see about moving the Yoshida posts in the 2024 Free Agency thread to this one. I've got an interesting take on this, that I'll chart out. His offensive production was quite good right up to about 120 games and then he fell off sharply. Coincidental, but that's the number of games he was playing in Japan. The league may have "caught up" with him, but that seems less likely given the flood of data that's available to everyone all the time. He was just about the best hitter on the team till Casas overtook everyone in the last few months.
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cdj
Veteran
Posts: 14,314
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Post by cdj on Jan 14, 2024 12:56:05 GMT -5
You guys have me more optimistic about him for this upcoming year
I loved me some 1st half Yoshida, the AB quality was sublime. If he can do that for a full year the contract will be well worth it
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Post by pappyman99 on Jan 14, 2024 13:19:12 GMT -5
Wanted to move the Masa discussion back to his thread. There are a lot of different opinions on him on here on what we have in him going forward. I was poking around and found this to be a striking similarity. Here are the first year numbers for Masa and Hideki Matsui, who also came to the US at age 29:
Matsui followed this up by hitting .298/.390/.522 in 2004, a 140 wRC+, and putting up 3 fWAR. For his career with the Yankees he hit .292/.370/.482 and put up 12.6 fWAR.
This is exactly the player the Red Sox hoped for when they signed Masa and I think he can be this guy. It would be a huge mistake to trade him away after a subpar first year. If they traded him and he had a follow up like Matsui we would all be kicking ourselves.
This is a good find and gives me hope. My concern is he is going to have to hit like Matsui (I think the sustained 120+ wRC+ someone mentioned earlier is probably a good barometer) if he is clogging down the DH spot His metrics had him at near Manny levels of defense in LF so he is scary out there
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Jan 14, 2024 13:24:25 GMT -5
Are the metrics ever kind to Red Sox LF? Would they have made Yaz look bad?
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Post by ancientsoxfogey on Jan 14, 2024 13:28:15 GMT -5
There may be all sorts of technical and physical reasons why Masa hit worse in the second half last year. But there is one very simple reason why he walked less. In this super-analytic age, not only do you know when particular players' performance metrics have deteriorated, for whatever reasons. Your opponents are aware of it, and rather quickly, as well.
So when Masa started faltering at the plate in the latter stages of the season, opponents knew it and told their pitchers "Don't nibble, go after him. He probably won't hurt you anyway." Result: more strikes, more disadvantageous counts, fewer walks.
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Post by jodyreidnichols on Jan 14, 2024 14:28:34 GMT -5
You guys have me more optimistic about him for this upcoming year I loved me some 1st half Yoshida, the AB quality was sublime. If he can do that for a full year the contract will be well worth it While I do think there is reasons for optimism, even some of the optimism should be somewhat tempered. Part of my job as an estimator is to mitigate risk, that said if I was a PM we'd never get projects. You should never be totally optimistic nor pessimistic either. As always a little common sense goes a long way. I think expecting his first half to carry over a full season while totally possible and maybe even improve on that it should not be counted on. To me what should be counted on is at worst slightly better than his overall numbers from last year with cautious optimism for the upside. To me it appears clear that something happened last year a nagging injury, simply work down, whatever they appear equally possible. Far more important with young players AND or newer players to any league is to see some periods where they excel as opposed to the Scott Coopers of the world. Cooper made an all-star team with the Sox and never showed anything close to exceling his first season just consistently average on a bad Red Sox team. I predicted then he'd reached his peak already as he never approached showing ANY flashes of excellence. When you hear the term reaching his potential it speaks of two different things really, one is flashes of actual production doing the walk, the other is reaching the potential the scouts see, has the god given ability but never actually producing those skillls.That said I think its a safe bet that Yoshi at least does slightly better than his overall numbers last year BUT still has a chance to actually do better than even his first half numbers suggest. IMHO it would be unwise to trade him BUT it would be wise to make him our mostly full time DH and play LF a few times a month. I think many fans will be surprised by how well he does as a hitter. I'm not confident his fielding improves but I think LF at Fenway with certain match-ups it still will make some sense to have him still play the field a few times a month.
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Post by kwodes on Jan 14, 2024 15:34:47 GMT -5
usually, if a hitter is fatigued, they feel they need to start the swing a little sooner, which leads to making earlier swing decisions, which leads to chasing more, swinging more, and weaker contact. Do you have any statistical evidence or reference material to support this? no stats, I played and coached in college and that was always something we dealt with. It was more the thought of "don't speed things up", because that would always lead to those issues. Fatigue wasn't always the cause, sometimes it was facing a pitcher with high velocity, but the outcome was the same. Similar to when a pitcher's body "rushes" and it gets all out of whack and they start losing all command.
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Post by bishop on Jan 14, 2024 21:34:07 GMT -5
Step 1: get rid of our third best hitter by both Steamer and Zips projections Step 2: ? ? ?
Step 3: Profit!
No get rid of what is by far our worst contact, $18 million for 0.6 WAR? 30 year old DH with 4 more years of that contract? I’m hard pressed to believe that there is actual interest in him on that contract So you think his contract is that bad, don't believe the rumors teams are interested in trading him, but want to trade him to ... who exactly? And what would you want to include to get someone to take a contract that bad in your mind? I believe the rumors teams are sniffing around and trying to buy low because they see the same reasons posters have said over the last page he *could* be better as a hitter and player, and I believe we wouldn't get anything worth trading for now because of the reasons why you and WAR didn't rate his 2023 highly. I hope Abreu and Rafaela (and Anthony in the minors) prove enough I want to move him soon, but he seems like our best option at the moment and someone with upside potential when it comes to his perceived value.
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