Players · Y · DH · 2026 regular season

Masataka Yoshida

Age: 33
B/T: L/R
Height: 5' 8"
Weight: 192 lb
Number: #7

Born: July 15, 1993 in Fukui, Japan
MLB debut: March 30, 2023
Salary, 2026: $18.6M

Compare with…vs Vladimir Guerrero Jr.vs Alejandro Kirk vs Maikel Garcia

dbWAR: 4.4
PA: 297
AVG: .274
OBP: .347
SLG: .399
wRC+: 108

Masataka Yoshida is a designated hitter for the Boston Red Sox. In 2026 he hit 5 home runs and knocked in 28 RBIs, notching 72 hits across 297 plate appearances in 87 games. His batting average was .274, 12.2% higher than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .347 clip and slugged .399, for an OPS of .746, 3.8% higher than the league mark of .719 — 5th of 16 on his team, and 146th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 88.8 mph off the bat, hit 39.9% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 3.4% of them and made contact on 84.4% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 108 wRC+ puts his offence 8% above average. That comes to 0.8 dbWAR — +3.3 runs with the bat, -0.3 for the ballpark, -0.1 on the bases, +1.7 on double plays, -6.1 for the position he plays, against replacement level. It includes no fielding: defensive runs are proprietary and are not estimated here, so the figure credits playing a demanding position but not playing it well.

League context

Percentile among qualified batters, 2026 regular season.

wRC+108

wOBA.332

ISO.125

BB%9.4%

WAR.8

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +7.8 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below.


2026	BOS	87	297	72	5	28	2	28	33	.274	.347	.399	.125	.294	9.4%	11.1%	.332	+3.3	108	0.8
2025	BOS	55	205	50	4	26	3	10	24	.266	.307	.388	.122	.280	4.9%	11.7%	.304	-1.9	92	0.1
2024	BOS	108	421	106	10	56	2	27	52	.280	.349	.415	.135	.302	6.4%	12.4%	.339	+9.2	117	1.4
2023	BOS	140	580	155	15	72	8	34	81	.289	.338	.445	.156	.316	5.9%	14.0%	.340	+9.9	110	2.1

Separate from the regular season

Postseason Postseason

Wild Card through World Series. These games are counted on their own: none of them are in the regular-season tables, career totals, league context, leaderboards or dbWAR on this page.

Postseason batting

Postseason Masataka Yoshida's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2025 Post	BOS	Wild Card	3	7	7	0	4	0	0	0	2	0	1	0	.571	.571	.571	1.143

Box-score and rate statistics only. wOBA, wRC+, FIP and dbWAR are measured against a full league season, and a postseason is a few teams playing each other for a month, so they are not computed for October.

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Season

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2026. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHP	30	27	8	0	3	4	.296	.367	.407	.347	13.3%
vs RHP	267	236	64	5	25	29	.271	.345	.398	.330	10.9%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 233 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 233 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 3.4%
Exit velocity: 88.8
Max exit velo: 108.6
Hard hit: 39.9%
Sweet spot: 31.3%
Launch angle: 8.9°

Barrel rate3.4%

Exit velocity88.8 mph

Hard hit rate39.9%

Contact rate84.4%

A barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have historically produced at least a .500 average and 1.500 slugging — 98 mph within 26–30°, widening to 8–50° by 116 mph. Reconstructed from Statcast's published anchor points, which reproduces them exactly; the interior is within a degree. Sweet spot (8–32°) is an exact definition.

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2026.

Below averageLeague averageAbove average

Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .243.

Situational hitting

How Masataka Yoshida hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.

Split by

By who is on base when he comes up. The season line is repeated as the baseline.
Situation	PA	AB	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
All situations	297	—	—	—	—	—	—	.274	.347	.399	.332
Bases empty	158	141	40	4	4	15	17	.284	.361	.418	.349
Runner on first	66	58	18	1	2	7	9	.310	.394	.448	.376
Runners on	139	122	32	1	24	13	16	.262	.331	.377	.312
RISP	73	64	14	0	22	6	7	.219	.274	.313	.254

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2026.

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Similar players

Nearest 2026 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.

Nolan SchanuelLAA

wRC+: 114
HR: 7
AVG: .276
WAR: 1.4

Very close

William ContrerasMIL

wRC+: 109
HR: 18
AVG: .270
WAR: 3.6

Carson KellyCHC

wRC+: 102
HR: 10
AVG: .258
WAR: 1.8

Maikel GarciaKC

wRC+: 97
HR: 3
AVG: .268
WAR: 0.9

How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.