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Red Sox Sign OF Masataka Yoshida
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Jan 14, 2024 23:42:54 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. Don't forget the WBC, which replaced spring training naps with amped up nation representation. He played every game with his team winning the final. Returned to camp for what, a week before the season started? All in all, another brick in the wall that he eventually hit.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Jan 17, 2024 17:46:35 GMT -5
Good point. I did not include that time in this image but if you tack those on, it's even more suggestive. I've charted out what most of us had a gut feeling for. To get a smoother trajectory the points are a running 15-game average of his OPS. So the first point is for games 1-15, the second for 2-16, and so on. Those are the games he played in, not the team's games since he got days off. He started slowly as we all remember, but within 30 games the average 15-game OPS had ramped up over .800 and quickly after that to over .850 where it stayed for a long time. He drops below that line at game 103, and it's downwards from then on. Add the time at the WBC and... that's just about what he was accustomed to playing in Japan. This isn't any sort of proof that he just ran out of gas, but it is very suggestive. Maybe the rest of the league figured him out, but they did have a few hundred at bats to do that earlier. I'll stick with the idea that he needs to adjust to the travel and the grind. Echoing another post about Casas' SF game and the West Coast trips, that was 103 games into the Sox season and all the travel that happened at that time. Hadn't thought much about it, but with the reduced number of games with the AL East teams, that had to increase the over-all air travel I'd think. Maybe that's for someone else to figure out! (click to expand)
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Post by incandenza on Jan 17, 2024 17:52:51 GMT -5
If the fatigue theory is right (and I mostly buy it), it does raise the question of why the team never put him on the IL to give him a breather. People were speculating about the fatigue issue at the time, so the team ought to have been aware of it. Plus he had a couple of nagging injuries he was dealing with during the season; it would hardly have been the least justified IL stint we've ever seen.
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Post by terriblehondo on Jan 17, 2024 18:39:08 GMT -5
It's all just wild guesses on what he is or will be. The hope is that ramping up early for the WBC the new country and being away from home for extended time wore on him. It could also be, that he is the guy a lot of other teams thought he was right from the start. Really need him to be good. IMO this outfield has so much uncertainty I worry about it going totally sideways.
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gerry
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Post by gerry on Jan 18, 2024 4:08:54 GMT -5
It's all just wild guesses on what he is or will be. The hope is that ramping up early for the WBC the new country and being away from home for extended time wore on him. It could also be, that he is the guy a lot of other teams thought he was right from the start. Really need him to be good. IMO this outfield has so much uncertainty I worry about it going totally sideways. I see your concern but can’t really share it to that level. These guys are not turnips. Last season’s four OF “rookies” included Abreu, Duran, Rafaella, Yoshida. Abreu was surprisingly good. Duran turned into a talented run creator with improved D. Rafaella, in his SSS, was almost as expected. Yoshida was among the best hitters in baseball until, tired and injured, he hit that wall. All are now major leaguers with both upside and warts. In other words, like everyone else. Add a healthy, intentionally limber O’Neill, hopefully a big RHB who can share DH with Masa, and the promise of Rafaella before too long and this OF, while not perfect, becomes a uniquely balanced blend of defense, offense, power, speed, handedness, depth, experience and youth. Unusual. It is also different than prior iterations. The speed of Rafaella, Duran, O’Neill, Abreu (and Grissom) is something new, and timely. Not all are base stealers but all can improve traffic flow. Can’t wait to see them in action.
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Post by terriblehondo on Jan 18, 2024 6:19:44 GMT -5
It's all just wild guesses on what he is or will be. The hope is that ramping up early for the WBC the new country and being away from home for extended time wore on him. It could also be, that he is the guy a lot of other teams thought he was right from the start. Really need him to be good. IMO this outfield has so much uncertainty I worry about it going totally sideways. I see your concern but can’t really share it to that level. These guys are not turnips. Last season’s four OF “rookies” included Abreu, Duran, Rafaella, Yoshida. Abreu was surprisingly good. Duran turned into a talented run creator with improved D. Rafaella, in his SSS, was almost as expected. Yoshida was among the best hitters in baseball until, tired and injured, he hit that wall. All are now major leaguers with both upside and warts. In other words, like everyone else. Add a healthy, intentionally limber O’Neill, hopefully a big RHB who can share DH with Masa, and the promise of Rafaella before too long and this OF, while not perfect, becomes a uniquely balanced blend of defense, offense, power, speed, handedness, depth, experience and youth. Unusual. It is also different than prior iterations. The speed of Rafaella, Duran, O’Neill, Abreu (and Grissom) is something new, and timely. Not all are base stealers but all can improve traffic flow. Can’t wait to see them in action. I hope you are correct.
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Post by asm18 on Feb 22, 2024 10:01:23 GMT -5
Great article on Fangraphs today on breaking down where things went awry for Yoshida in the second half: his plate discipline. "In Japan, Yoshida’s low swing rates were the backbone of his approach. The qualified batter with the lowest swing rate in the majors last year was Yoshida’s World Baseball Classic teammate Lars Nootbaar (35.3%), followed by Soto (35.7%). At his peak in Japan, Yoshida approached that level of selectivity. This, combined with a low chase rate and high contact percentages on pitches in and out of the zone, was Yoshida’s recipe for success. During the first half of last season when his plate discipline was still intact, his swing and chase rates looked similar to what he had been running in Japan. Everything trended the wrong way during the second half of the season; he became much more aggressive and started chasing pitches out of the zone at a far higher rate than he had in years." blogs.fangraphs.com/masataka-yoshida-lost-himself/
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Post by incandenza on Feb 22, 2024 10:10:49 GMT -5
Definitely jibes with what the old eyeballs saw: a totally different kind of hitter from what he was early in the year (and what he was advertized as).
It's why I'm fairly optimistic about him recovering this year - it seems unlikely that all of his skills just abandoned him for good in July 2023; much more likely is some combination of league adjustment, travel grind, injuries, and mental stuff threw him off. I think he can recover. In fact it looks like at least some indicators were heading in the right direction in September, which is a good sign.
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ematz1423
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Post by ematz1423 on Feb 22, 2024 10:12:21 GMT -5
Great article on Fangraphs today on breaking down where things went awry for Yoshida in the second half: his plate discipline. "In Japan, Yoshida’s low swing rates were the backbone of his approach. The qualified batter with the lowest swing rate in the majors last year was Yoshida’s World Baseball Classic teammate Lars Nootbaar (35.3%), followed by Soto (35.7%). At his peak in Japan, Yoshida approached that level of selectivity. This, combined with a low chase rate and high contact percentages on pitches in and out of the zone, was Yoshida’s recipe for success. During the first half of last season when his plate discipline was still intact, his swing and chase rates looked similar to what he had been running in Japan. Everything trended the wrong way during the second half of the season; he became much more aggressive and started chasing pitches out of the zone at a far higher rate than he had in years." blogs.fangraphs.com/masataka-yoshida-lost-himself/Certainly matches with the eye test, it was just about night and day in his plate discipline when he was going well vs when he went downhill. I would think/hope that getting back to the plate discipline he showed in the first half should be a correctable thing.
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Post by puzzler on Feb 22, 2024 10:22:01 GMT -5
Definitely jibes with what the old eyeballs saw: a totally different kind of hitter from what he was early in the year (and what he was advertized as). It's why I'm fairly optimistic about him recovering this year - it seems unlikely that all of his skills just abandoned him for good in July 2023; much more likely is some combination of league adjustment, travel grind, injuries, and mental stuff threw him off. I think he can recover. In fact it looks like at least some indicators were heading in the right direction in September, which is a good sign. From his interview yesterday, it seems he has identified that as well and is taking steps to correct it. He immediately discussed not trying to control the results and only the process; that to me spoke directly to swing decisions. He was also in camp very early. A full camp, a better idea of what the full mlb season rigors require and a little more time as the DH I think could lead to a big season.
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