Let’s get this out of the way first: I was very, very wrong about Jarren Duran. I thought that, as a 27-year-old with parts of three seasons under his belt, he wasn’t likely to improve his game all that much. I thought that his unsustainable .381 BABIP in 2023 portended a massive drop in offensive production. I thought that, when his career was over, he would be known more for being the sombrero boy on the 2023 Mexican national team in the World Baseball Classic than for anything he did on the field.
The only comfort I can take in being so wrong is knowing that everyone else was wrong, too.