Masataka Yoshida on Sat, Jul 25, 2026

Yoshida walks twice but goes hitless as his hot recent stretch pauses

Yoshida went 0-for-2 with two walks and zero strikeouts against Toronto today. No hits landed, but the zero-strikeout, two-walk line tells us his bat-to-ball feel and plate discipline stayed intact even without a base hit to show for it.

Over his last 10 games he is 9-for-30 (.300) with 2 home runs and 7 RBI, comfortably outpacing his season averages of .265 and a .735 OPS. That stretch included a 3-for-5 night with a homer against Tampa Bay on July 18, so today's hitless outing reads as a brief pause within an otherwise hot run rather than a sign of a slump. His platoon splits also stand out this season: a .286 average and .804 OPS against left-handed pitching (21 at-bats) versus .266 and .728 against right-handers (177 at-bats). The sample against lefties is small, but the gap is notable. Pitch-by-pitch data from today's game was not available, so it is hard to say how much of today's outcome ties back to the handedness of Toronto's pitching, but the fact that he still worked two walks without chasing suggests his approach at the plate has not broken down.

Unicorn's take: the .300 baseline over his last 10 games is still very much intact, so if the hitless nights start stacking up, the thing worth watching next is whether he is laying off hittable pitches rather than any issue with recognizing balls out of the zone.