When Red Sox prospect Jarren Duran hit a wall, his teammates helped pick him up

FORT MYERS, Fla. — For 12 months, the kid out of Long Beach State made a difficult game look easy. He stole bases by the dozen. He hit .348 at his first minor-league stop, got promoted, hit .367 at the next level, moved up again and hit .387. He’d been a seventh-round draft pick in summer 2018, and by summer 2019, he was being touted as a top-100 prospect in all of baseball.

Jarren Duran was an unstoppable force in the Red Sox minor-league system, until he reached Double A and stopped cold in his tracks.

Duran hit just .192 his first three weeks in Portland last summer. He went 15 games without an extra-base hit. By late July — a little more than a year after his exceptional three-hit professional debut — he was hitting just .208 with no power and fewer answers. The kid who couldn’t be stopped just couldn’t get going.

He was exactly where he needed to be.

In the grind of minor league baseball, failure — or the feeling of failure — is a part of the process. It’s a seemingly essential ingredient experienced and recognized by everyone who’s been through it. Mookie Betts had two extra-base hits in his first 30 professional games. Michael Chavis hit .223 in his first full season. Xander Bogaerts had six hits and 10 strikeouts in his first 10 Triple-A games.

When Duran went through that grind for the first time, struggling mightily after months of steady success, he looked to the big guy in the locker next to him and to the new guy added to the roster late in the season, and found previously unfamiliar faces who immediately recognized what he was experiencing.

“That’s what the minor leagues are for,” said Bobby Dalbec, the touted Red Sox prospect who still has a locker next to Duran this spring. “To fail and learn how to deal with it.”

Duran learned. Beginning July 21, he had 22 hits during a 12-game hitting streak. That barrage raised his average more than 50 points, where it more or less stayed the rest of the season. He finally homered in August and stole 13 bases that final month. In big-league camp as a 23-year-old this spring, he had two hits and an impressive catch in his Grapefruit League debut.

He has a better sense, he said, of who he is as a player, and like so many of his teammates, he’s come to appreciate the hard-earned lessons of a game that’s always difficult, no matter how easy it sometimes looks.

“All of us have the tools to play in the big leagues,” Duran said. “But it’s the guys that are mentally strong and can push through that, that’s the guys who make it.”

Ask around, and the other Red Sox prospects in camp this spring can immediately rattle off the first time professional baseball punched them in the gut. For Dalbec, it was early 2017, his first full season, when he got off to a slow start, got injured, then struck out 14 times in one five-game stretch.

“I was swinging at everything,” he said. “Just trying to make up for lost time.”

For C.J. Chatham, it was short-season ball, right after he was drafted in 2016. He’d never seen breaking balls so consistent with so much movement. He’s a career .298 hitter today, but he was hitting .207 then.

“You’re kind of like, ‘Dang, maybe talent can only get you so far sometimes,’” Chatham said. “You get to a point and you kind of sit back and say, ‘I’ve got to work on some things.’”

For Tanner Houck, it was 2018 in Class-A Salem, his first full season after being a first-round draft pick. He had a 5.50 ERA in the first half, then a 3.13 in the second half.

“Having the first failure was awesome,” Houck said without a hint of sarcasm. “It’s kind of weird to say that first failure was awesome, but it’s truly amazing. It shows you that you can come back from deep down in the deepest abyss that happens, and then you can rise to the occasion and get better.”

Houck remembers calling his mother from that abyss, telling her he had no idea what was wrong or how to fix it. Sure, he was working on some things — a new arm slot, throwing a four-seam fastball after nothing but two-seamers in college — but he’d never struggled like that.

His mom’s advice? Keep going. Work hard. Believe in yourself.

Mothers always know.

Duran got the same message last season from a new set of teammates who knew what he was going through. He compared the experience of arriving in Double A to starting at a new high school. Duran was careful not to step on any toes when he got to Portland. He didn’t want to say much, but wanted to prove he belonged.

When Duran got there, his locker was next to that of Dalbec, who was one of the first to reach out, boost his confidence, try to talk him through the familiar frustrations. Young center fielder Tate Matheny did the same, as did veteran third baseman Cody Asche.

And when Dalbec was promoted to Triple A in early August, Tommy Joseph was added to the Portland roster. Joseph was 28 years old, had twice hit 20-plus homers in the big leagues and can today cite the teachings of noted trainer Tim S. Grover in the book “Relentless.” The book’s subtitle: From good to great to unstoppable.

“You watch kids go through times that are frustrating in this game,” Joseph said. “It can be very emotional. … If we can channel those emotions and get them going in the right way, that’s what you want.”

And that, Joseph noted, is the challenge for every athlete, not just the kids hitting .200 for the first time. It’s the kind of lesson that has to linger, that carries a player through a career.

“The case with (Duran),” Joseph said, “was just trying to be Superman every day on every play — when that’s just not possible in this game because of how team-oriented it is. … He’s a good kid, so it was easy to have those conversations with him because things can get really overwhelming really fast when your name is in the paper or in articles or on social media a lot. It’s easy to fall into traps.”

That’s what happened, Duran said. He fell in a trap. Right into a sports cliche. He tried to do too much. He let the pressure get to him. He got away from his strengths. As he got comfortable, he got loose, and he got back to being himself.

“It was really good for him to get challenged like that, particularly so much right when he got there to Double A,” Red Sox vice president of player development Ben Crockett said. “Your inclination is to try to change what got you there. Everybody is trying to get incrementally better, but you don’t want to change who you are, particularly when you’re having that level of success.”

The Red Sox were impressed with Duran’s adjustments. His numbers never got back to what they were in the first half of the season, but his at-bats were better and his mentality was better. He’s appeared focused but confident this spring, talking often with the big-league outfielders, but then laughing easily with his minor-league teammates. Duran doesn’t want to be a one-dimensional player, he said, but he does want to focus on what he does best: he’s a table setter, a base stealer, a strong defender in the outfield. Just get on base, he said, force the pitcher to throw a fastball because there’s a fast runner heading for second, and then have Dalbec or Joseph or J.D. Martinez drive him in.

“I mean, it’s baseball,” Duran said. “Everything is pretty hard. But I think having a good group of guys, good group of older guys, it’s huge. When you’re down on yourself, they pick you up. (They say), ‘Hey man, we’ve all been through it. Just keep pushing. Keep doing your work. It’s going to come.’”

For 12 months, Duran made a difficult game look easy. When it became hard again, that’s when he got better.

(Photo of Duran: Reinhold Matay / USA Today)