Good morning! The Red Sox are winning the World Baseball Classic… which is actually exactly what happened last time. In the 2023 tournament, Masataka Yoshida roared out of the gate on his way to MVP honors, Yu Chang continually electrified a raucous home soil crowd in Taiwan, and Kiké Hernandez, Jorge Alfaro, and Alex Verdugo all supplied clutch hits for their national teams.
But do you remember what Jarren Duran was doing for Team Mexico in the 2023 tournament? Probably not, because Duran — still a year away from his breakout season — barely got on the field and was instead the team’s designated home run sombrero guy. Three years later, he’s not only arguably the most accomplished player on the Mexican roster (he’s up there with Randy Arozarena and Alejandro Kirk, at least), but he’s also been one of the tournament’s best performers. In fact, Duran and Yoshida are both strong early candidates for tournament MVP right now, with Duran leading the field in home runs with three, while Yoshida is second in both homers and hits (two and six, respectively).
Advertisement
The irony here is that it sure looks like Duran and Yoshida will be competing against each other for at-bats in the DH spot for the Red Sox once the regular season gets underway. So our question of the day (as supplied by the comments yesterday) is: who will be the Red Sox DH on opening day?
Duran likely has the inside track. There’s no question he’s been the better player overall and he seems to be one of Alex Cora’s favorites.
But Yoshida’s contact-heavy profile is relatively rare on this current Red Sox roster and he ended the 2025 season as one of the lineup’s best performers. To complicate matters, to the extent that either one of these players is involved in on-going trade discussions, they’ll likely need to be showcased in the shop window.
So what say you? Talk about the DH spot or whatever else you want, and, as always, be good to one another.