Masataka Yoshida fuels Red Sox rally with 2 home runs in 8th

MILWAUKEE — It will be a long time before Boston Red Sox fans know if the offseason signing of Japanese star Masataka Yoshida will pan out. Suffice to say, after his eighth-inning explosion on Sunday, the outlook looks a great deal rosier.

Yoshida hit a go-ahead solo homer in the eighth, then later in the same inning capped a nine-run Boston rally with a 407-foot grand slam to right as the Red Sox beat the Brewers 12-5 on Sunday.

That gave Boston a series win against the first-place Brewers after Milwaukee erased an early three-run lead and carried a 4-3 advantage into the eighth.

«This is a team — we're going to grind until the game is over,» Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. «We've been doing this the whole season.»

Yoshida's first home run came after Justin Turner knotted the score with his second homer of the season, giving the Red Sox back-to-back homers for the first time since 2021. Both blasts came off Milwaukee reliever Matt Bush.

The grand slam Yoshida rocketed into the right-field seats off of Javy Guerra left his bat at 105.4 mph, an emphatic statement for a player who entered the game mired in a season-long slump, albeit one that has shown signs of lifting in recent games. A career .327 hitter in Japan, Yoshida entered Sunday hitting just .213 with three extra-base hits in 71 plate appearances to start his Red Sox career.

«I think I feel more comfortable than before this series,» Yoshida said through a team interpreter. «I talked to the hitting coach about my mechanics and hitting form, and I found a better one.»

Apparently so. Yoshida became the first Red Sox hitter to hit two homers in an inning since David Ortiz, who did it against the Texas Rangers on Aug. 12, 2008. When that was mentioned to Yoshida, he