Masataka Yoshida (30) of the Boston Red Sox was selected as the AL Player of the Week.
Yoshida joined the team ahead of this season by signing a five-year, $90 million (116.7 billion) contract with Boston.
Ahead of the opening, he participated in the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC) as the Japanese national team and scored 2 homers and 13 RBIs, becoming the tournament’s RBI leader, raising the expectations of Boston fans to the fullest.
However, when the season started, Yoshida showed an appearance that did not match his ransom.
On March 31 (Korean time), Yoshida, who started as the 5th hitter in the MLB opening game, got off to a good start with 2 hits in 4 at-bats, 1 RBI and 1 run, but in the following 12 games, he recorded only 1 home run with a batting average of 0.136. , the season OPS disappointed the fans with a 0.560.
As it is an expensive ransom of more than 100 billion won, some even started to say that it is a so-called ‘eating and running’.스포츠토토
However, Yoshida managed to bounce back proudly.
In the following 16 games, he posted a batting average of 0.438, 5 homers and 18 RBIs, and his previous sluggish appearance was nowhere to be found. The OPS of the season, which was 0.560, was also raised to 0.939, playing a role as a cleanup.
Starting with a multi-hit against Minnesota on the 21st, Yoshida has recorded 16 hits in a row until today (9th).
In particular, he hit two home runs in one inning against Milwaukee on the 24th, and three hits against Baltimore on the 25th.
Yoshida, who wielded a batting average of 0.480, 2 home runs and 8 RBIs in 6 games last week, was no problem to receive the AL Player of the Week.
Thanks to Yoshida’s performance, his team, the Boston Red Sox,
won 8 wins and lost 2 losses in the last 10 games, and succeeded in narrowing Baltimore, the second place in the AL East, by 1.5 games.
