Red Sox's Chaim Bloom Explains Why Boston Invested In Masataka Yoshida
When the Boston Red Sox signed premier Japanese outfielder Masataka Yoshida, it created some waves around Major League Baseball.
While Red Sox Nation celebrated the notable addition -- or started googling because they had never heard of him -- others around the league immediately started to critique the contract.
Yoshida signed a five-year, $90 million contract. Despite being the top positional player on the international free-agent market, the deal was much higher than many anticipated. Even Yoshida himself seemed to be surprised in his introductory press conference.
Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom defended the contract at the aforementioned press conference and doubled down on Wednesday.
After joking about increasing Masataka Yoshida's contract by $25 million so that fans could lean on the nickname Yoshi, Bloom explained why he believes the Japanese star will be worth every penny of his freshly minted deal.
"Obviously we really like him or we would not have gone where we did to get him," Bloom told our very own Steve Perrault and Joey Copponi on the ITM Podcast."
Bloom then got into specifics on why he expects Yoshida to perform well at the MLB level.
"How he looks over the baseball, his awareness of the strike zone, his ability to make contact -- those are things that typically translate well from NPB to here," Bloom said. "Obviously, there are no guarantees in baseball or life but they typically do translate very well and they have been elite (traits for Yoshida)."
Yoshida hit .335 with 28 doubles, a triple, 21 home runs, 88 RBIs, 1.008 OPS and a nearly unheard-of 41-to-80 strikeout-to-walk ratio last season in 119 games for the Orix Buffaloes.
"He hits the ball hard," Bloom continued. "Power is often something that sometimes translates, sometimes doesn't but you try to look past the stats on the baseball card and say 'how hard is this guy actually hitting the ball? Does he have power to all fields?'
"A lot of guys can get into pull power but they can't drive the ball the other way, which especially for a left-handed hitter in our ballpark is a really really useful thing to be able to do and he's shown the ability to do that. He hits (high velocity)."
After getting into some specifics, Bloom placed a bow on his evaluation of the 29-year-old slugger.
"It's a pretty simple approach, simple swing, so we just love everything about the offensive profile and that really is the foundation of why we went after him the way we did."
In other, simpler terms, the Red Sox expect Yoshida to mash baseballs for the next five seasons.
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