Masataka Yoshida, Honey, Don’t You Know That I’m Loving You?

When the Red Sox signed Orix Buffaloes star Masataka Yoshida over the winter, suffice it to say I was intrigued. In his walk year, in the second-best league in the world, he hit .336/.449/.559 with 21 home runs and 82 walks against just 42 strikeouts. In the 20 months leading up to his competitive debut in MLB, he had made two NPB All-Star teams and won a batting title, a Japan Series, an Olympic gold medal, and a WBC title. In the latter event, he went 9-for-22 with two home runs and struck out just once.

I don’t pretend to know much about what goes on in NPB, but everything I’d heard about Yoshida was exciting: Here was this ultra-high contact hitter who idolized Bryce Harper and posted basically peak Juan Soto numbers against the toughest pitching you’ll find outside MLB. Moreover, no baseball player’s name is more fun to say in an Australian accent, if you care about that sort of thing.

Whenever a star player comes over from Japan, there’s a natural excitement. North American baseball is so saturated with information that it’s a refreshing change when a fully formed top-level pro appears from another league — all the more so because every newcomer presents the opportunity to learn. American baseball pedagogy is as open-minded now as it’s ever been, but it still imposes an orthodoxy. Athletes are molded to fit an ideal; if not intentionally, then they mold themselves.

The most successful Japanese players in MLB history haven’t just adapted to thrive in the American baseball landscape; they’ve expanded it. Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, Yu Darvish, and Shohei Ohtani all had unique qualities when they made the trip across the Pacific. Each challenged the perceptions that make American baseball what it is. And to some extent or other, each refined, synthesized, or transcended his new environment.

I tried not to get too far out over my skis on Yoshida, because I hoped he could be that kind of player. In this league, swing-and-miss is an acceptable byproduct of power production, like fly ash or greenhouse gases. It’s not desirable, but it’s tolerable in bracingly large quantities. In Japan, Yoshida wasn’t just a guy who never struck out; he drew a ton of walks and hit 20-plus home runs every year. How much of that could he port over against American pitching?

That’s the eternal question for a player like Yoshida: a mix of “Can Messi do it on a cold Tuesday night at Stoke?”-type American chauvinism with genuine curiosity and excited optimism. Because, what if he can? Wouldn’t that be cool?

Yoshida started slow. He only struck out five times in his first 13 games, but he wasn’t very productive when he was making contact, hitting just .167/.310/.250 and grounding into three double plays in just 58 plate appearances. The floor, a left-handed-hitting Yuli Gurriel without the defense, seemed to be in play. But since April 20, he has hit .438/.479/.750 with five home runs and five doubles. And it’s not just batted ball luck. Over that time, his HardHit% of 59.3 ranks fourth in baseball among 184 qualified hitters. He’s second in wRC+. Last night he swung and missed for the first time in a week. Heading into Tuesday’s game, he was hitting .321/.403/.536 on the season.

Approach and contact rate were never going to be the issue with Yoshida. Anyone who can post the kind of strikeout-to-walk ratios he had in Japan can tell a ball from a strike and put wood on the ball. The question was what would happen once the ball was in play. And as it turns out, his expected stats look just fine. Actually, the only thing unsettling about them is how closely they track with his real-world numbers. It’s a bit uncanny.

The only thing that worries me about Yoshida is the fact that while he hits the ball like he’s trying to dig the Well to Hell: With incredible force, but straight into the ground. He has the fourth-highest groundball rate among qualified hitters and the seventh-highest GB/FB ratio. And while there are advantages to that approach — players who hit the ball on the ground can run a higher BABIP — I think it’s fair to say that Yoshida not only makes hard enough contact to get the ball through the infield, but he’s also possessed of the kind of uncommon bat control that might allow him to enjoy more success than your average batter.

On the other hand, part of what made Ichiro Ichiro was his 80-grade speed. Baseball Savant says Yoshida has 22nd-percentile sprint speed; in general, let’s just say he is a below-average runner. He’s not going to beat out that many swinging bunts or Baltimore chops. And hitting the ball as hard as he does poses other risks; if an infielder does get to it, it could turn into a double play, as Yoshida learned during his rough first two weeks in the majors.

Still, it’s possible to hit the ball on the ground that much and be a good hitter, even a great one. Christian Yelich won an MVP doing what Yoshida’s doing not that long ago (the counterargument being Yelich’s offensive numbers since 2020). Through May 8, there are 33 qualified hitters with a groundball rate of 50% or higher. Of those, 20 have a wRC+ of 100 or better. Eleven of them have a wRC+ of 120 or better. Among the names you’ll find on that list, in addition to Yoshida: Xander Bogaerts, Austin Riley, Ronald Acuña Jr., Ohtani, and Soto.

The other thing to remember: Yoshida is making a lot more contact than most comparable hitters. When we think of ground ball machines, the players who come to mind are utility infielders who don’t make a lot of hard contact. Among the 33 players mentioned, only three have a higher contact rate than Yoshida: Luis García, Alec Bohm, and Mauricio Dubón. García and Dubón are… if I call them slap hitters, someone’s going to get offended, but you get the idea. Bohm, meanwhile, is a bat control guy with doubles power who sometimes gets confused for a slugger because he’s 14 feet tall.

I keep groping for an established player to compare Yoshida to. In terms of batted ball profile, Yelich isn’t bad, but he struck out too much even in his prime. Bogaerts is close. Soto walks so much more than anyone else it’s hard to use him as a comp in any circumstances.

Perhaps this chart will demonstrate why it’s so difficult to find a comparable hitter. Yoshida’s recent hot streak has taken him over a 10% walk rate, under a 10% strikeout rate, and over an ISO of .200. In the 20 years before this one, 16 individual seasons meet those criteria. Here’s Yoshida, through Monday, compared to those seasons:

So, like, that’s a lot of Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds, and Vladimir Guerrero. (And also Brian Giles, who keeps showing up on lists like these. I guess “Stathead” is a catchier name than “The Machine that Occasionally Reminds You How Good Brian Giles Was.” But I digress.) Soto has never had a season like that. Nor did Joey Votto or Mookie Betts or Joe Mauer, or most of the other hitters you’d think would be capable of combining walks, power, and contact in this manner.

Seasons meeting those parameters used to be more common, but a few things happened at the end of the 2000s. First, Bonds and Vlad retired, and Pujols’ bat slowed down. But also strikeout rates went through the roof, making it difficult (if not impossible) to hit for .200 ISO power and strike out less than 10% of the time.

Moreover, many of the seasons on this list were buoyed by intentional walks. My first thought upon beholding this list was astonishment that Dad Vlad had posted not one but two seasons with a double-digit walk rate. (Four, in fact, though the other two fell outside the parameters of the search.) The reason: He led the American League in intentional walks both seasons he showed up on the list. Seven of these 16 seasons featured league-leading intentional walk totals; only three (Kinsler, Encarnacíon, and Sheffield) managed to make the list with single-digit intentional walks. Not to impugn the notorious Bonds 2004 campaign, or Pujols’ 2009 season in which he was walked intentionally 44 times, but today’s sluggers don’t have the advantage of being put on base for free that frequently. Only seven hitters in all of baseball got walked intentionally 10 or more times last season.

In short, Yoshida is doing something special. Yes, it’s a small sample, and yes he probably won’t stay this hot for much longer, but it’s hard not to get excited. He’s teasing us, at the very least, with the possibility of being a paradigm-breaker, just as some of the great Japanese stars before him have done.