Ezequiel Duran: 'I'll Play Them All' To Make Texas Rangers
Ezequiel Duran just wants to make the Opening Day roster for the Texas Rangers. Doesn’t matter how, doesn’t matter what position.
“I’ll play them all,” Duran said recently through an interpreter. “No preference.”
The good news for Duran is that the Rangers have the same thought.
The middle infielder, acquired two years ago as part of the Joey Gallo trade, is on a super-utility pathway that could land him on the 26-man roster.
That means playing wherever, whenever the Rangers want.
That included a stint in Dominican Winter Ball in which he played all three outfield positions.
That included playing third base on Sunday against Seattle, a game in which he went 3-for-4 with three RBI, which improved his spring batting average to .344.
That is the biggest reason why the Rangers want him to play multiple positions.
“It’s his bat that works,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “He makes consistent hard contact and he just loves the game.”
In this Spring Training, Duran has already played four positions — second base, shortstop, third base and left field.
The first two are the positions he’s most familiar with. Those are the positions that led the New York Yankees to sign him in 2017 out of the Dominican Republic on a $10,000 signing bonus. Those are the same positions that enticed the Rangers when the Yankees wanted Gallo in the summer of 2021.
The Yankees sent Duran, Josh Smith, Glenn Otto and Trevor Hauver to the Rangers for Gallo in a deadline deal. It looked like Duran had a clear-line path to a middle infield job with the Rangers one day.
That was before the Rangers invested more than $500 million in contracts with shortstop Corey Seager and second baseman Marcus Semien last offseason.
With that, Duran’s clear path was gone. When he was called up in early June of last year, he started at third base and only played a middle infield spot when Seager or Semien needed an off-day. When he went back to the minor leagues, he played center field at Triple-A Round Rock, in addition to infield.
With the Rangers, Duran batted .236/.277/.365/.642 in 58 games. He scored 25 runs with two doubles, one triple, five home runs and 25 RBI. He walked 12 times and struck out 54 times.
To hear Bochy tell it, the Rangers aren’t done moving him around this spring, either.
“I’m going to throw him out at center and you’re going to see him at short,” Bochy said. “We keep moving him around and it doesn’t bother him a bit.”
The constant movement this spring doesn’t seem to bother Duran a bit. Just so long as it leads to a roster spot.
“I enjoy it because it’s more opportunity for me to show what I can do,” Duran said.
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