{"id":165244,"date":"2026-03-17T01:17:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T01:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=165244"},"modified":"2026-03-17T01:18:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T01:18:04","slug":"165244","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=165244","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox Insider Predicts How Masataka Yoshida &#8216;Problem&#8217; Will Be Handled"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"overflow-hidden\" data-lead-image=\"true\"><picture><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"undefined w-full\" title=\"Sep 28, 2025; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Red Sox designated hitter Masataka Yoshida (7) hits a home run against the Detroit Tigers in the first inning at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-Imagn Images\" src=\"https:\/\/images2.minutemediacdn.com\/image\/upload\/c_crop,x_0,y_0,w_4022,h_2262\/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto\/images\/ImagnImages\/mmsport\/inside_the_red_sox\/01kkwb1pvvzbkg4h068b.jpg\" alt=\"Sep 28, 2025; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Red Sox designated hitter Masataka Yoshida (7) hits a home run against the Detroit Tigers in the first inning at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-Imagn Images\" width=\"4022\" height=\"2262\" \/><\/picture><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex items-center gap-4 mt-4 text-grey font-group-tiny\" data-lead-image=\"true\">Sep 28, 2025; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Red Sox designated hitter Masataka Yoshida (7) hits a home run against the Detroit Tigers in the first inning at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-Imagn Images | David Butler II-Imagn Images<\/div>\n<p id=\"inline-text-0\">Things are shaping up for Masataka Yoshida to become perhaps the highest-paid bench player in Major League Baseball this year.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\">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&#8217;s at least an above-average major league hitter. But the Red Sox don&#8217;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&#8217;s in a precarious position.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\">Still, the fact that the Red Sox haven&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\"><em>If you like our content,\u00a0<\/em>choose Sports Illustrated as a preferred source on Google<em>. <\/em><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"inline-text-4\">Is Yoshida going to survive trade rumors again?<\/h2>\n<figure><figcaption><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images2.minutemediacdn.com\/image\/upload\/c_crop,x_0,y_203,w_6000,h_3375\/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto\/images\/ImagnImages\/mmsport\/inside_the_red_sox\/01kkwbap058br3c6ap9p.jpg\" alt=\"Yoshida\" \/>Sep 28, 2025; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Red Sox designated hitter Masataka Yoshida (7) hits a home run against the Detroit Tigers in the first inning at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-Imagn Images | David Butler II-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\">With under two weeks to go before opening day, one Red Sox insider &#8212; Chris Cotillo of MassLive &#8212; gave his two cents on how he thought the Red Sox would handle Yoshida&#8217;s contract with the team moving forward.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\">&#8220;It is a good problem to have, but it&#8217;s a problem nonetheless,&#8221; Cotillo said during an appearance on the &#8220;Monster Territory&#8221; podcast. &#8220;It just comes down to, can they get a reasonable trade offer? I think if they do, they&#8217;d be willing to pull the trigger and move on from him.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-8\">&#8220;If not, there are worse things in the world than rolling out a 26-man Opening Day roster with this guy who&#8217;s a proven big leaguer as your fourth, fifth outfielder and a bench bat.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-9\">Reading between the lines, it would seem that to this point, the league has been collectively unwilling to swallow enough of Yoshida&#8217;s deal to placate the Red Sox. And if he comes out of the gates on fire this season, there&#8217;s no guarantee that the Red Sox will still be just as willing to move on from him as they perhaps previously were.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-10\">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&#8217;t happened to Yoshida yet also makes it feel increasingly unlikely that it eventually will. Cotillo&#8217;s comments reinforced that notion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sep 28, 2025; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Red Sox designated hitter Masataka Yoshida (7) hits a home run against the Detroit Tigers in the first inning at&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Red Sox Insider Predicts How Masataka Yoshida &#039;Problem&#039; Will Be Handled - NEWS USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=165244\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Red Sox Insider Predicts How Masataka Yoshida &#039;Problem&#039; 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