Red Sox, Hyers confident in 'fearless' Duran

BOSTON -- When Jarren Duran belted a single against Gerrit Cole on the first pitch of his Major League career on July 17 and then belted his first career homer two days later against the Blue Jays, the hype train was traveling at runaway speed.

Then came the inevitable struggles that just about any player faces in his introduction to the Major Leagues.

Hitless in his last 11 at-bats, Duran was on the bench for the start of Tuesday night’s game against the Blue Jays, which was postponed due to inclement weather. But that had more to do with the Jays having a lefty starter in Robbie Ray than Duran’s mini-slump.

Fact of the matter is, the Red Sox are facing a string of lefties over the next few days, which could limit Duran’s playing time. The Jays are starting lefties on Wednesday and Thursday also, and the Rays could have lefties as either starters or bulk-inning roles for all three games at Tropicana Field this weekend.

“He hits left-handed pitching,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “He’s done it throughout his career. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I think Thursday against [Hyun Jin] Ryu there’s a good chance that we’ll play him, not having Raffy [Devers] in the lineup. So we might do that. We’ll see how it goes in Tampa. Obviously, we’ll have to program sometimes when lefties go one time through the order, or two times through the order. We’ll see how we balance that.”

The Red Sox are clearly not concerned that Duran has gone three straight games without a hit. Perhaps more importantly, they don’t believe Duran has any temptation to overreact to a small sample size and lose confidence.

“I would [have concern] for certain guys, but not for this one,” said Red Sox hitting coach Tim Hyers. “Not Duran. I do believe in his makeup. We’ve got a guy that if he wasn’t playing baseball, he wanted to be, what, a Navy Seal, I think he said. Or in the special forces. I think we have a guy that has special makeup.”

Though the hits haven’t been falling frequently of late for the team’s No. 3 prospect, it could just be a matter of time.

“I like what I see. Like I’ve said before, he’s a kid, a young prospect, that’s fearless,” said Hyers. “He’s a thinker. He’s smart. He’s got a lot of weapons. He can impact the game in a number of ways. He’s hit the homer, he’s turned an error into a double. Used his speed. He’s an exciting player.”

Hyers did his part to make sure Duran was maintaining his confidence.

“We were just in talking a few minutes ago,” said Hyers. “It’s like, ‘You’re going to learn and learn every day, and it’s going to get easier and easier as it goes. But right now, there’s going to be days when you stumble. There’s going to be days that the game just sticks it to you. And that’s OK. It happens to everybody. How to manage that? How do you keep winning those small battles? And before you know it, you see those young guys we have now, they’ve all experienced it and they’re well on their way.'”