Texas Rangers shortstop Ezequiel Duran (20) gestures after hitting a home run during the ninth inning of a baseball game against the Houston Astros at Globe Life Field, Saturday, July 11, 2026, in Arlington.
Chitose Suzuki/The Dallas Morning News
ARLINGTON – You don’t become a solution – sorry, The Solution – without first identifying the problem.
A year ago, Ezequiel Durán epitomized everything that was wrong with the Rangers offense. Chased too much. Walked too little. He lost confidence and made the mistakes of a player trying to please instead of trying to win. He got buried on the bench and was twice sent to the minors. Normally, the loudest guy in the room, he got skittish and quiet every time he saw bench coach Luis “Pipe” Ureta walk through the clubhouse.
“He told me just the other day, ‘Every time I saw you I was kind of scared,’” Ureta told The Dallas Morning News earlier during Hispanic Heritage Month. “He didn’t want to be the guy going down. Nobody does. But he knew when a guy got healthy, whether it was Wyatt [Langford] or [Corey] Seager or anybody, he was the odd man out. So, we talked about that a lot.”
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They had plenty of time. They spent almost all of the winter together. Ureta, a native of Colombia, managed Aguilas in the Dominican Winter League. Durán, who is from the western Dominican city of San Juan de la Maguana, was under contract to Aguilas, where he had played two of the three previous winters.
It was the first step in finding The Solution.
Texas Rangers shortstop Ezequiel Duran celebrates after driving in a run with a single during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the San Diego Padres at Globe Life Field on Friday, June 19, 2026, in Arlington.
Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News
Durán has been the Rangers’ best player this season and has made a strong case to end up in the top 10 of the AL in MVP voting based on his versatility and defensive excellence. He and St. Louis’ José Fermín are the only two players this year to start at seven different defensive positions. With a .755 OPS, though, Durán has an 80-point edge offensively on Fermín.
He’s been one of the most valuable utility players of this century, following the path of Ben Zobrist and peak Kiké Hernández. Since 2000, they are the only three players to start at every position on the field, excluding pitcher and catcher, and produce an OPS of at least .750 and a WAR, according to Baseball-Reference, of 3 or better. Durán has the eighth-highest WAR in the AL, according to FanGraphs (which has a slightly different calculation than Baseball-Reference) and the fifth-highest overall defensive metric, regardless of position. He should be a shoo-in for both the utility Gold Glove and the utility Silver Slugger. Since both awards began in 2022, no player in either league has swept both.
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Along the way, he’s relied on a village of people, at least two of whom make communication easier by speaking in Spanish, to rebuild his confidence and help him navigate issues as they pop up. Manager Skip Schumaker made it clear from the first time he spoke with Durán that there was a fresh start for him. Ureta spent the winter building his confidence. And assistant hitting instructor Alex Cintrón, who spent the last seven seasons as Houston’s hitting instructor, works intimately with him on his swing daily.
“We fight all the time,” Durán said with a smile. “Every day. Sometimes I’ll get a base hit and he’ll tell me what I have to fix. And I’ll be like ‘but I got a base hit.’ But he doesn’t want me to get in any bad habits.”
Cintrón needed only one name to make his point.
“It used to be like that with Yordan,” Cintrón said, and make no mistake, the Yordan he’s referencing is Alvarez. “Yordan loved it. He still calls and tells me that’s what he misses most. When they fix something, they can be superstars. So, yeah, we fight. We argue over it. But I want the best for him. And you can’t get too comfortable. Making adjustments in this game is such a big part. And I want him to take every at-bat seriously. If it’s wrong, we’ve got to go back to the cage and fix it.”
Texas Rangers third baseman Ezequiel Duran (20) homers during the ninth inning of a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants at Globe Life Field on Monday, Aug. 3, 2026, in Arlington.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
The fix began over the winter.
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Durán’s ability, athleticism, and versatility were never the problem. His bat was.
When he got to Aguilas, shortly after he finished the 2025 season with no home runs and the 10th lowest OPS (.559) among 348 batters with at least 200 plate appearances over the season, Ureta sat down with him.
In addition to reinforcing Schumaker’s message of fresh starts, Ureta added his own. He told Durán he’d get regular starts at shortstop. And he reminded Durán what he does best.
“Don’t try to do too much, be yourself, and just have your abilities play out; that’s all you need to do,” Ureta said he told Durán. “Just enjoy the game. He enjoys the game wherever he plays it. But being down there in front of his people – in front of his country – and getting the opportunity to play for a winning team, I think the rest took care of itself.”
Like this: In his first at-bat of his first game, he homered.
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“I think that was a big relief for him, too,” Ureta said.
“I was just thinking about making adjustments, play the game, have fun and play hard,” Durán said. “The game is hard. I was just trying to get my opportunities and go 100% after them.”
Seemed to work. Durán ended up playing more games in the Dominican than in either of his previous two seasons there. He ended up with an .862 OPS there, the best of his three seasons. And he went to camp with a bit more confidence.
Texas Rangers infielder Ezequiel Duran bats during the seventh inning of a spring training game against the Kansas City Royals at Surprise Stadium on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, in Surprise, Ariz.
Smiley N. Pool/Staff Photographer
There he became acquainted with Cintrón, who was hired partly because Schumaker wanted a Spanish-speaker on his hitting staff, specifically to be able to better communicate with Hispanic players. There were only two on the Rangers’ 40-man roster: Durán and Alejandro Osuna. It wasn’t difficult to see the motivation.
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Cintrón may not have been familiar with Durán, the person, but he’d already figured out his game. Cintrón is kind of a savant at reading swings and pitchers tells. Over the last few years with Houston, he’d given the Astros’ pitchers plenty to go on. The Astros fed the Rangers a steady diet of four-seam fastballs out of the zone and the Rangers seemed powerless to do anything against them. Durán had a .515 OPS against the Astros from 2022-25.
Cintrón suggested Durán, whose strikeout rate went to 25% in 2025, while his walk rate fell to an unplayable 3.7%, back off the plate a couple of inches. The idea being: It would make pitches off the outside edge appear less hittable. Simple? Sure. Sometimes simple is best.
There were some other changes, too. And they discuss every at-bat, before he goes to the plate and when he comes back to the dugout.
“I don’t know if my swing is different,” Durán said. “But my posture is. My lower body is. My hands, too. I feel like I can make adjustments right away. And we are both on the same page. We want the same thing. Go to the plate, get a good pitch and make a good swing.”
The results have been dramatic, stemming from much-improved plate discipline. Durán has walked at a 7.7% rate this year, more than doubling his rate from a year ago. His strikeout rate has declined to 23.5%.
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Texas Rangers’ Ezequiel Duran (20) is doused by Alejandro Osuna, right, as the team celebrates Duran’s run-scoring single in the ninth inning a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants in Arlington, Texas, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez
There is ongoing conversation about getting his foot down early before getting into his swing. That’s been the most recent topic of animated conversations around the batting cage.
Those conversations are always loud. That’s just how Durán is.
“I’m the crazy guy,” Durán said. “It’s just my personality. I don’t want to change that. I’m too loud.”
What’s changed this year: The rest of the league is hearing him, not just his teammates.