Masataka Yoshida Undergoes Shoulder Surgery

Give the guy credit for playing through a torn labrum and the torn thumb muscle and still being a pretty solid hitter

The good news is we don't have any past incidents of the team downplaying the severity of a Yoshida injury or corresponding recovery time, so we can just assume this is correct

There were multiple instances last season where Yoshida's absence from the lineup seemed nonsensical (at the time).

- one instance (8/30) had O'Neill (91 wRC+ vs RHP) start against the Tigers in a pivotal game over Yoshida (134 wRC+ vs RHP).
- another (9/1) had Cora play Wong in the OF, for the first time in his career (MLB and MiLB), as a defensive replacement (after Jansen pinch hit) over Yoshida.

When asked by reporters, Cora's explanation was that Yoshida came into the year as the team's DH and that was his position, as if a guy who has played a dozen years as an outfielder would forget how to do it. This makes more sense if Cora was hiding the injury.

These were just two examples off the top of my head. Although it made sense to DH Yoshida most of the time, benching him when his bat was obviously needed hurt the team; but if he was unable to throw, it makes far more sense. At least it lessens my personal frustration with Cora's roster management.

For those who think that despite the bat Yoshida should never play defense again, consider that his poor -9 OAA in LF in 2023 doesn't look quite as bad compared to the combined -5 OAA of O'Neill/Refsnyder in 2024. LF at Fenway is tough.

Sean McAdam:



Cue the training montage

I wasn't thinking about anything in return, more so a salary dump. 
does he have any takers or is his salary to onerous given the injury?

At this point, Yoshida's value is so low you might as well hold on to him and see if he can turn things around next year.

With that said, here are a few intriguing "bad contract" swaps out there:

CIN: 1B/3B/DH Jeimer Candelario, 2 years/$29 million left on current deal
Candelario was always an odd fit in Cincinnati where the Reds have a surplus of controllable hitters, especially at the corners where Candelario plays. Great American Ballpark is supposed to be great for left-handed hitters, and Candelario makes a lot of sense for the Red Sox as a DH who can back up 3B and 1B. The Red Sox would probably need to send some cash and/or a player or two to make this deal work.

PHI: LF/DH Nick Castellanos, 2 years/$40 million left on current deal
PHI: SP Taijuan Walker, 2 years/$36 million left on current deal
I don't think this deal works without taking on both contracts, since the Phillies are unlikely to want to just swap Yoshida for Castellanos and Walker alone would leave a roster logjam in the lineup by adding Yoshida without subtracting one of Castellanos or Schwarber. For the Red Sox, it might be worth taking on the extra money to add a right-handed power hitter at DH and a starting pitcher not too far removed from league average results. Then again, I'm not sure how motivated the Phillies are to save money when they are clearly in a "win now" moment. Yoshida is a Bryce Harper fanboy and would probably pay for his own bus ticket to Philadelphia.

ARI: SP Jordan Montgomery, 1 year/$22.5 million left on current deal
The Diamondbacks have a finite budget and seem eager to move on from Montgomery. They also used a left-handed DH for most of the season in Joc Pederson, so Yoshida could presumably fill that role. This deal makes sense if Arizona is focused on the 2025 bottom line and is willing to roll the dice on 2026 and 2027.

TON is getting that QO no doubt now

Right, no disagreement here the guy is a high caliber professional hitter when healthy and I have no issue with him on the roster next season. I definitely don't want to see him in some sort of crummy salary dump where they get a lesser hitter with a poor contract for him. I can see why some might think that if they can move him in order to use the salary elsewhere it wouldn't be a bad idea though. 

He does not have the kind of power usually associated with a DH but he hit some absolute bombs and should be able to hit 15-25 HR.  If the team has enough power in other spots in the lineup that type of power is not a problem.
Fans tend to form opinions early on and then when they come on strong establishing a social media record there are times when it seem like they would rather see a player fail than admit they were wrong.
In any case I hope he proves his worth and agree just dumping him is a bad idea.

....and thumb.

I agree with the premise that Yoshida would be looking at less money, and possibly fewer years, if he were a FA - but to give context to the emboldened section, fWAR isn't as useful regarding DHs due to the positional adjustment for DH and the lack of players who hit at a high level and DH.

Take a look at the amount of fWAR by position for that same period, 2023-2024, with (positional adjustments)
SS: 189.1 (+7.5)
CF: 155.4 (+2.5)
C: 144.9 (+12.5)
2B: 138 (+2.5)
3B: 131.1 (+2.5)
RF: 120.1 (-7.5)
LF: 108.4 (-7.5)
1B: 96.6 (-12.5)
DH: 46.1 (-17.5) - 14.3 fWAR from Ohtani alone

As you can see, the amount of fWAR from ALL DHs is quite low, and aside from catcher the fWAR by position follows the positional adjustments precisely. So if you're making an apples-to-apples comparison, you would have to at least remove the positional adjustment (and at that point may as well be looking at wRC+ or similar statistic) as many of those players with similar WAR would be non-viable MLB players if they only played DH (and 'may' hit worse if asked to play DH). Also, hit-first players get paid much better than field-first players in both free agency and arbitration due to the shortage of supply of good hitters and the traditional means from which arbitration salaries are created - which then affect all other salaries by comparison.

Here's a quote from Fangraphs on the subject from 2010:

library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/positional-adjustment/