If 2026 was Jarren Duran’s floor, his floor has value: above average outfield defense, good baserunning, low-contact bat but with some pop. Of course we’ve seen his ceiling, in 2024, in which he gathered a significant number of MVP votes.
There will be teams who’ll take that floor on the chance that Duran will regain some of that ceiling.

And the fix may be a simple as making him swing more slowly. Because that’s what he did in 2024. If you look at the Bat Tracking section of Jarren Duran’s Baseball Savant page, you’ll see that he was swinging more quickly in 2026 than he did in 2024. He was on average a slightly opposite field hitter in 2024, while being on average a pull hitter in 2026. You’ll also see that in 2024 he was more on-time than early on offspeed and breaking pitches, while in 2026 he was more early than on-time. A team that has noticed this could pick up Duran, convince him to slow down his swing a bit so that he’s on time for more of his swings, and reap some benefits.

Here are those images from Jarren Duran’s Baseball Savant page. The dashed lines represent the league-average curves.

But the Red Sox could do that, too. But now we have a logjam in the outfield, right? Four starter-worthy players for three positions?

Well, in 2026, thanks to injury, it took 4 of those guys to keep 3 of those guys on the field throughout the year. And 2025 was kind of the same story. And with Yoshida out much of both years, the DH role also helped give regular playing time to all the starting-caliber outfielders.

So frankly I don’t see a logjam, and I don’t see much value in trading Duran for whatever you can get. His presence on the roster solves more problems than it causes, in my book.

As for causing more problems than they solve, I’ll give that honor to Trevor Story, with Masataka Yoshida as a runner up. Both due to earn more than Jarren Duran in 2027. Even if having to cover a lot of their salary in a potential trade, the Red Sox might still shed enough payroll in a Story or Yoshida trade to pay most of Duran’s 2027 salary.