Red Sox’s Jarren Duran Not Satisfied After Breakout Season

Jarren Duran won’t take the field again for the Boston Red Sox in 2023.

The 27-year-old suffered a season-ending toe injury against the New York Yankees on Aug. 20, with an eventual surgery costing him the remainder of the Red Sox’s season. It was a bitter end for Duran, who broke out as one of Boston’s best players after his promotion in April.

Duran was slashing .295/.346/.482 with 34 doubles, eight home runs and 40 RBIs to go along with the 24 stolen bases at the time of his injury, which is certainly enough to give him the inside track to a starting job in 2024.

He doesn’t want to hear it, though.

“I’m never satisfied,” Duran told Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic. “Honestly, just get better in every part of my game. It’s baseball. We all know the second you get satisfied, this game will punch you in the mouth.”

“You can’t go into spring like you have a spot. That’s when you get satisfied. You gotta go in like, ‘I gotta earn my spot’ every time. That’s just my mentality. I gotta earn my creed here. Just because I had one good year, that’s nothing.”

It’s obvious that previous struggles have influenced Duran’s mentality, with the speedster intent on never having to get sent back down to Triple-A Worcester again. Red Sox manager Alex Cora is comfortable enough to say that Duran will be sticking around, however.

“He is important for us,” Cora told McCaffrey. “There’s a reason he was still in the organization when the season started. There’s a reason we were patient. There’s a reason he got called up right away when (Adam Duvall) went down. … He’s a big part of what we’re trying to accomplish in the future.”

The future is quickly approaching, with a myriad of youngsters up and ready to start contributing whenever the Red Sox will let them. The final few weeks of the 2023 season certainly haven’t gone to plan, but there’s room for hope in the near future.