Jarren Duran is back in the center of the Red Sox offseason conversation, and this time the path forward looks even messier than it did at the trade deadline.
The 30-year-old outfielder has slid to the bottom of Boston’s outfield depth chart after ranking as the second-worst qualified hitter by WRC+ in 2026. That drop-off has turned him into one of the biggest roster questions facing Craig Breslow, especially with the Red Sox already dealing with an expensive roster and very little room to maneuver.
USA Today’s Bob Nightengale recently named Duran among the winter’s top trade candidates, but his read on the situation did not exactly sound like a clean exit for Boston. “They don’t want to pay a projected $11 million in salary arbitration for a player who may be a fourth outfielder, at best,” he wrote. That’s the kind of valuation that makes Duran hard to keep - and just as hard to move.
The problem for the Red Sox is that the market may not be there. If another team is going to take on Duran at that salary, Boston may have to attach a prospect just to get a deal done. And if the Sox aren’t willing to absorb any money in a trade, the return could be even thinner.
That leaves non-tendering him as another possibility, but it may be the one that stings the most. Duran still has the kind of upside that made him look like a perennial All-Star and possible MVP candidate in 2024, when he posted a better bWAR than NL MVP winner Ronald Acuna Jr.
He also showed flashes of that form this season. Cutting him loose for nothing would clear money and a roster spot, but it would also mean walking away from a player who still has real value in the right setting.
Nightengale’s blunt assessment matched the reality Boston is staring at. “They don’t want to pay a projected $11 million in salary arbitration for a player who may be a fourth outfielder, at best. He should be as good as gone.”
That kind of outcome would be a long way from where Duran stood two years ago, and it leaves Breslow trying to solve a problem he helped create by waiting too long to act. The Red Sox have already let the issue linger through one deadline and one offseason before that, and now the clock is tighter with the impending lockout looming.
Duran remains one of the offseason’s clearest change-of-scenery candidates, but that doesn’t make him easy to move. Boston has to find a solution, because carrying four starting outfielders into the 2027 season is not a real option.
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