Boston Red Sox' Outfielder One of Baseball's Biggest Disappointments in 2026
Red Sox left fielder Jarren Duran has been one of baseball's worst hitters in 2026, and it's led to the Boston offense struggling mightily.
Video Transcript
What's up everyone?
Zach Coe here for Roundtable.
I wanted to take a minute to talk about the struggling Jarren Duran, and how the worst year of the twenty-nine-year-old's career has really sunk the Red Sox offense.
Of course, this was a Red Sox team that entered the season with more questions than answers in the lineup, relying on young players like Roman Anthony, Marcelo Meyer, William Abreu to take step forward, and veterans like Jarren Duran to return to form after a down season in twenty twenty five.
Instead, of course, the young pieces haven't taken that step forward, and like I said, Duran is in the midst of the worst year of his career.
Entering Thursday's series opener against the Yankees, Duran has the fourth worst weighted runs created plus of any hitter in Major League Baseball at sixty-seven, and the same can be said for his batting average of one ninety-nine, while he features the third worst on base percentage in baseball.
Of course, without a true power hitter in the heart of the order, Duran's ability to reach base and use his ninety-third percentile sprint speed to create chaos on the base paths is key to the Red Sox offensive production, and it's no coincidence that their best offensive month coincided with a great month from Duran.
In May, he hit two sixty-one with an eight seventy-nine OPS and the most home runs he ever hit in a single month in his career with nine, while the Red Sox offense as a whole ranked in the top ten in batting average on base percentage and slugging percentage while they were just outside the top ten in weighted runs created plus.
However, that month has proven to be an outlier for both Duran and the Red Sox offense as a whole, as he's hitting just one forty-three with a four twenty-two OPS in June, while his WRC plus of seven is comfortably the lowest among one hundred and seventy qualified hitters in the month.
As a result of his struggles, interim manager Chad Tracy had to drop him down to fifth in the lineup after leading off for much of that Chad Tracy era.
Similarly, the Red Sox offense has fallen back into the doldrums of the league, ranking in the bottom ten in all of those stats that I just gave you, that they were in the top ten in, in the month of June, along with runs scored, where they are twenty-fifth.
Duran's struggles came to a head on Wednesday afternoon in the series finale against the Rockies, where Tracy chose to bench his left fielder amid a one for twenty stretch, which spanned the duration of the Red Sox six-game West Coast trip in Seattle and Colorado.
Tracy told Tim Healey of the Boston Globe that he just needed to give Duran a break.
Duran is a crucial part of this Red Sox lineup, like I said, using his speed to create chaos on the bases is how the Red Sox need to manufacture runs, so they'll really need to get him going if the run that Craig Breslow keeps saying is right around the corner actually is going to come to fruition
