Article: Jarren Duran is the Least Clutch Player on the Red Sox

[Jordan Leandre]

Tuesday night's loss to the Baltimore Orioles felt like a recent low for the Boston Red Sox.

Every inning from the eighth through the tenth saw them load the bases and score zero runs in such situations en route to a 4-3, 11-inning loss. Squandering each of those opportunities is frustrating, but none more than when it happened the first time.

Down 3-1 in the eighth inning, the Red Sox had bases loaded and nobody out with the heart of their order -- Jarren Duran, Trevor Story, and Masataka Yoshida -- due up. The Orioles countered the ordeal with right-hander Rico Garcia, who entered play with a 6.04 career ERA, and he struck out all three. 

Duran flailed at a changeup; Story the same at a slider; Yoshida got his doors blown off with a 97 mph fastball. All three equally guilty in bringing home nothing in that frame, but for Duran, it's a sign of a lingering issue defining a significant portion of his 2025 campaign.

The Red Sox have eight players with 30 plate appearances or more in high-leverage situations this season, and Duran leads the team with 61 such plate appearances. He ranks last in wRC+ (27), wOBA (.214), extra-base hits (zero), and is sixth in runs batted in (10). He's also got the second-highest strikeout rate in those situations, trailing Story by 0.7 percent. However, Story has a 109 wRC+ and a team-leading 22 RBIs in high leverage.

In the interest of fairness, Duran posted a 127 wRC+ in 51 high-leverage plate appearances last season, trailing only Tyler O'Neill and Ceddanne Rafaela with the same minimum requirement (30 PAs). He also carried a 13.7% walk rate with a 27.5% strikeout rate, which is nearly identical to his 13.1 and 26.2 in 2025. The main difference is Duran had a .467 batting average on balls in play last year compared to .229 in 2025.

Sounds like a batted ball luck problem, yes? Well, not really. Duran had a hard-hit rate of 40.0% last year compared to 27.8% in 2025. Perhaps more staggering is that all of the hard contact went into soft contact -- 3.3% in 2024 into 16.7% this year. That said, it doesn't negate the fact Duran's OPS and wRC+ in medium and low-leverage spots is .826 and 124, respectively. Both rank fifth on the team, so perhaps not a world-beater, but certainly a very valuable hitter in those spots.

As debates constantly linger about the long-term outlook of the Red Sox's outfield alongside Roman Anthony and Rafaela, Duran coming up small in high-leverage moments this frequently doesn't help his case to stay. Especially when compared to the other potential odd-man-out candidate, Wilyer Abreu, who leads the team with a .966 OPS and 137 wRC+ in high leverage. The right fielder is already a better defender and more stable power threat than Duran, so coming through more consistently in big spots in a relatively similar volume (47 plate appearances) only helps his case in addition to being considerably younger.

At the end of the day, the sample sizes are still very small in the grand scheme of things, and it's not like Duran has been a repeat offender in the clutch. However, this is becoming a constant offensive deterrent for the Red Sox in a time of year where every individual result is magnified. It'd be nice -- for both Duran's sake and the Red Sox's playoff hopes -- if he could start delivering when it matters most.

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[TedYazPapiMookie]

The Duran haters never stop.  

FACT (CLUTCH FACTOR DEFINED BY BASEBALL REFERENCE)

2 out RISP - Duran .396   That fact alone makes all the bogus information in this article obsolete.

FYI

2 out RISP - Abreu .233 This suggests Abreu is the player that needs to go since he is the weaker defender, can't hit LH pitchers and is missing the clutch gene.

CAREER STATS

2 out RISP - Duran .304 and Abreu .289

So Duran is raising his clutch factor in 2025 and Abreu has dropped his clutch factor by 56 points.

Isn't it fun to see facts instead of unsubstantiated conjecture?

I still don't understand after all Duran has done for Boston (despite being screwed over by Cora) why there are so many haters in the ranks of the Boston Fan Base.  The opposite is true for Abreu who has gotten every break in the book from Cora. 

Duran remains under rated especially by the haters and Abreu remains grossly overrated by a similar group of fans who simply can't accept Duran as the better player making the following true.

ABREU SHOULD BE THE ODD MAN OUT IN THE OUTFIELD!!!  RAFAELA SHOULD OWN RF PERMANENTLY.  DURAN SHOULD OWN CF PERMANENTLY and ATHONY SHOULD OWN LF PERMANENTLY.

[harmony]

FWIW Jarren Duran apparently can curse in the clutch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAetR1FjSKI

 

[moonslav59]

Clutch is not a repeatable skillset. Even with a guys like Papi & Reggie jackson, their "clutch" numbers were about the same as their career overall numbers. 

[harmony]

5 hours ago, TedYazPapiMookie said:

The Duran haters never stop.  

FACT (CLUTCH FACTOR DEFINED BY BASEBALL REFERENCE)

2 out RISP - Duran .396   That fact alone makes all the bogus information in this article obsolete.

Thank you for the cherry-picked stat.

Baseball Reference provides a fuller picture under Clutch Stats and Leverage:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=duranja01&year=2025&t=b

Scroll down.

[moonslav59]

2 minutes ago, harmony said:

Thank you for the cherry-picked stat.

Baseball Reference provides a fuller picture under Clutch Stats and Leverage:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=duranja01&year=2025&t=b

Scroll down.

Like .625 career Late & Close and .609 High Leverage?

That's like Abreu vs LHPs! LOL!