Jarren Duran’s go-ahead homer in seventh inning leads to Red Sox’ third straight win over the Royals

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — At his best, Jarren Duran creates havoc, changing games like few others in baseball. For most of the first seven weeks of the 2026 season, however, that capability remained dormant.

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“It hasn’t been the strongest showing this year,” Duran conceded.

But on Wednesday, for the second straight night, he dominated a game against the Royals, making a jaw-dropping defensive play and later delivering a two-run, seventh-inning homer that turned a deficit into a 4-3 victory as the Red Sox completed a three-game series sweep.

With the Sox down, 3-2, and Carlos Narváez on first after a leadoff single, Duran continued a recent pattern of spitting on pitches out of the strike zone. He negotiated a 3-to-1 count, then attacked a 99 m.p.h. Steven Cruz fastball on the outer half of the plate.

Cavernous Kauffman Stadium rarely permits opposite-field homers to lefties, but Duran’s liner carried just over the fence and into the Red Sox bullpen. It was Duran’s sixth homer of the year, his fifth with men on base.

“It’s always fun to hit a homer, especially oppo, because it was into our bullpen, too,” said Duran. “I got to see them jumping around for me, [which] probably what made my night.”

Duran made the night of many teammates. He finished 2 for 5 with the homer and a triple, punctuating a series in which he went 5 for 10 with 4 walks, 2 homers, 1 double, 1 triple, and 1 stolen base. Across three games, he also raced around left field like the Tasmanian Devil.

In the third inning of a 2-1 game, Maikel Franco sliced a ball down the left-field line. Duran, shaded to left-center, measured approximately 25 strides and perfectly timed a leap, crashing into and reaching above the padded wall to make a catch against the metal fence.

“I’m willing to get hurt to make a play for my pitchers,” Duran said.

“I don’t know how he caught [it],” marveled Sox starter Connelly Early. “He’s a freak athlete.”

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Duran’s late homer was the decisive note in a back-and-forth contest. The Royals took a first-inning lead against Early when Salvador Perez somehow pulled his hands inside to get to a well-located, 94 m.p.h. fastball for a solo homer. The blast was the 311th of Perez’s illustrious career, a mark that ranks second in franchise history to Hall of Famer George Brett (317).

The visitors responded immediately against former Red Sox starter Michael Wacha. Willson Contreras tripled to lead off the second, and later scored on an RBI single by Nick Sogard to tie the game, 1-1. The Sox nearly broke the game open, loading the bases with no outs, but managed just one more run on a double play grounder by Narváez on which Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia made a spectacular play.

Early thus had the slimmest of margins for error with the Sox ahead, 2-1. But in the fifth, he erred twice.

The lefthander issued a leadoff walk — his first free pass of the game — to Starling Marte. Then, against Elias Díaz, Early went to a first-pitch sinker in search of a double play. The 91 m.p.h. offering stayed over the plate and Díaz unloaded, the resulting collision sending the ball on a 405-foot journey that put the Royals ahead, 3-2.

For Early, the two homers continued to expose his foremost vulnerability. He’s allowed nine long balls over his last seven starts (40 innings). Still, with another quality start (6 innings, 3 runs, 1 walk, 5 strikeouts), Early continued to show the mix and moxie of a reliable starter while improving to 4-2 with a 3.33 ERA in 10 outings.

“Other than [the pitch to Diaz], he was in complete control,” interim manager Chad Tracy said.

The Red Sox countered two innings later with Duran’s two-run blast.

The Boston bullpen was shorthanded, with both Garrett Whitlock and Justin Slaten unavailable after working the prior two games. But Greg Weissert delivered four critical outs for his first hold in nearly six weeks, including an inning-ending strikeout of Bobby Witt Jr. to strand the tying run in the seventh, and Jovani Morán added an inning-ending punchout of Jac Caglianone in the eighth.

Aroldis Chapman followed with an adventurous but ultimately scoreless ninth to convert his 27th straight save opportunity dating to last July. The bullpen finished the series with 10 scoreless innings, a throughline across the three-game sweep.

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Another throughline? Duran’s dynamism.

“If he starts going,” Tracy said, “it’s no secret that’s going to help us go.”