{"id":517182,"date":"2026-03-11T14:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T14:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/517182\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T14:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T14:23:09","slug":"jarren-duran-or-masataka-yoshida-who-will-be-the-red-sox-dh-on-opening-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/517182\/","title":{"rendered":"Jarren Duran or Masataka Yoshida \u2014 Who will be the Red Sox DH on Opening Day?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">Good morning! The Red Sox are winning the World Baseball Classic<a href=\"https:\/\/www.overthemonster.com\/2023\/3\/15\/23641469\/the-red-sox-are-winning-the-world-baseball-classic-masataka-yoshida-yu-chang-rafael-devers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:\u2026 which is actually exactly what happened last time;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;\u2026 which is actually exactly what happened last time&quot;}\" class=\"link \">\u2026 which is actually exactly what happened last time<\/a>. 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 Kik\u00e9 Hernandez, Jorge Alfaro, and Alex Verdugo all supplied clutch hits for their national teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">But do you remember what Jarren Duran was doing for Team Mexico in the 2023 tournament? Probably not, because Duran \u2014 still a year away from his breakout season \u2014 barely got on the field and was instead the team\u2019s designated home run sombrero guy. Three years later, he\u2019s not only arguably the most accomplished player on the Mexican roster (he\u2019s up there with Randy Arozarena and Alejandro Kirk, at least), but he\u2019s also been one of the tournament\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">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 (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.overthemonster.com\/red-sox-analysis\/96884\/its-been-a-long-strange-journey-for-masataka-yoshida-whats-next\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:as supplied by the comments yesterday;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;as supplied by the comments yesterday&quot;}\" class=\"link \">as supplied by the comments yesterday<\/a>) is: who will be the Red Sox DH on opening day?<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Duran likely has the inside track. There\u2019s no question he\u2019s been the better player overall and he seems to be one of Alex Cora\u2019s favorites.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"788\" height=\"1032\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4538499e5cc4fc9b33265ecef4580cee.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"\">But Yoshida\u2019s contact-heavy profile is relatively rare on this current Red Sox roster and he ended the 2025 season as one of the lineup\u2019s best performers. To complicate matters, to the extent that either one of these players is involved in on-going trade discussions, they\u2019ll likely need to be showcased in the shop window.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">So what say you? Talk about the DH spot or whatever else you want, and, as always, be good to one another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning! The Red Sox are winning the World Baseball Classic\u2026 which is actually exactly what happened last&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[13193,146354,28642,94785,66346,28631,363,12943,28624,99,227390,79537,72364],"class_list":["post-517182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-alejandro-kirk","tag-alex-verdugo","tag-jarren-duran","tag-jorge-alfaro","tag-kike-hernandez","tag-masataka-yoshida","tag-mlb","tag-randy-arozarena","tag-red-sox","tag-sports","tag-team-mexico","tag-the-athletics","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}