While you were sleeping, Red Sox slugger Masataka Yoshida—the crown jewel of Chaim Bloom’s offseason haul—was doing this to the Czech Republic.
While he may not have been the free-agent splash Red Sox fans were hoping for, Yoshida has been, at least to this point, the star of the World Baseball Classic, leading all players with eight RBI through three games. The Japanese phenom has hit a robust .625 over that span (5-for-8), contributing three hits against South Korea and two more in Saturday’s rout of the Czech Republic.
We didn’t see much of Yoshida this spring—he appeared in just two Grapefruit League games before leaving to join his Japanese teammates (All-Stars Shohei Ohtani and Yu Darvish among them) in the WBC. But the few glimpses we saw were encouraging, getting a crash course in playing the Green Monster from Red Sox alum Jim Rice while putting on a show at batting practice.
Yoshida didn’t come cheap (five years, $105 million), though, if the 29-year-old turns out to be even half the player he was in Japan, winning consecutive batting titles in 2020 and 2021, he should provide a needed spark to a Red Sox lineup still searching for an identity in wake of recent departures, namely Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez.
Elsewhere in the tournament, there remains a distinct possibility that, depending on the outcome of Saturday and Sunday’s games, Group A could finish in a five-way tie between the Netherlands, Cuba, Panama, Italy and Taiwan, prompting an obscure tiebreaker (lowest quotient of fewest earned runs allowed divided by the number of defensive outs) to determine which two advance to next week’s quarterfinals in Tokyo. The loser, in that scenario, would face “relegation,” preventing them from appearing in the following World Baseball Classic in 2026.
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