Things are shaping up for Masataka Yoshida to become perhaps the highest-paid bench player in Major League Baseball this year.

With two years remaining on the five-year deal he signed to come to Boston, valued at just over $37 million, Yoshida has proven that he’s at least an above-average major league hitter. But the Red Sox don’t trust that he can handle the outfield, and after his name has been thrown around in trade talks for the last year-plus, the 32-year-old has to feel like he’s in a precarious position.

Still, the fact that the Red Sox haven’t traded Yoshida yet, combined with manager Alex Cora consistently promising that everyone on the roster can get the at-bats they need, has made the prospect of a trade seem less likely than some may have predicted.

If you like our content, choose Sports Illustrated as a preferred source on Google.

Is Yoshida going to survive trade rumors again?

With under two weeks to go before opening day, one Red Sox insider — Chris Cotillo of MassLive — gave his two cents on how he thought the Red Sox would handle Yoshida’s contract with the team moving forward.

“It is a good problem to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless,” Cotillo said during an appearance on the “Monster Territory” podcast. “It just comes down to, can they get a reasonable trade offer? I think if they do, they’d be willing to pull the trigger and move on from him.

“If not, there are worse things in the world than rolling out a 26-man Opening Day roster with this guy who’s a proven big leaguer as your fourth, fifth outfielder and a bench bat.”

Reading between the lines, it would seem that to this point, the league has been collectively unwilling to swallow enough of Yoshida’s deal to placate the Red Sox. And if he comes out of the gates on fire this season, there’s no guarantee that the Red Sox will still be just as willing to move on from him as they perhaps previously were.

When someone is involved in trade smoke for this long, you can never be truly surprised if they eventually get moved. But the fact that it hasn’t happened to Yoshida yet also makes it feel increasingly unlikely that it eventually will. Cotillo’s comments reinforced that notion.