With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of the offseason, taking a look at every player who appeared in a major league game for the Texas Rangers in 2025.
Today we are looking at infielder Ezequiel Duran.
Once upon a time, Ezequiel Duran was considered a bat-first infield prospect.
Its been a minute, hasn’t it?
Hell, once upon a time, Ezequiel Duran was a bat-first major leaguer. If we cast ourselves back to 2023 — the greatest season in the history of the Texas Rangers, I think we can all agree — Ezequiel Duran spent the first half of the season contributing significantly to an offense that was wrecking fools left and right. He was playing shortstop when Corey Seager was out, he was playing left field when Corey Seager was in, he was hitting wherever he was. One of the major discussion points leading up to the 2023 trade deadline was, should the Rangers be willing to part with Duran in a deadline deal? The consensus was no, he was too good, too young, too important a part of the Rangers lineup.
At the end of June, 2023, Ezequiel Duran was slashing .320/.361/.557. It looked like, even if Glenn Otto, Trevor Hauver and Josh Smith did nothing, Ezequiel Duran was going to turn the Joey Gallo trade into a steal.
Over the final three months of the season, Duran slashed .225/.382/.310.
In 2024, he slashed .246/.288/.321 in 92 games.
In 2025, he slashed .224/.266/.293 in 90 games.
Things are going in the wrong direction.
In 2025, Duran put up a 572 OPS against righthanders and a 541 OPS against lefties. He put up a 532 OPS at home and a 589 OPS on the road.
Fun fact — in 103 plate appearances on the road in 2025, Duran had 3 RBIs. 3!
If one wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, one can chalk up some of his struggles to irregular playing time. He was optioned in late April, with the Rangers wanting him to get more regular at bats to try to get back into a groove. In 14 games for Round Rock, he slashed .345/.390/.673. He had four homers for the Express in those 14 games, which is four more home runs than he had for the Rangers in 2025.
When things went pear shaped in August and Duran was pressed into more regular duty, he hit better, slashing .278/.303/.348 in 119 plate appearances and 43 games from August 4 until the end of the season. That’s not great, but it is better than the .156/.222/.222 he was rocking prior to that point. Marcus Semien had a .230/.305/.364 slash line for the 2025 season, as a point of comparison.
Duran has spent parts of four seasons in the majors, beginning in 2022. His xwOBA by year is .257, .320, .258 and .247. That 2023 season seems like a bit of an outlier.
Looking at 2022-25, Duran’s walk rates and K rates are pretty consistent from year to year. He strikes out a lot (25.1% for his career, roughly bottom quartile) and doesn’t walk at all (4.9%, roughly bottom 10%). His K rate was actually highest in 2023, at 27.3%, with his 2025 mark being 25.1%. His walk rate in 2023 was 5.2%, and dropped to a career-low 3.7% in 2025, though that delta is just a matter of differing degrees of bad.
As one would expect, Duran swings a lot, both in the strike zone and outside of the strike zone. His rate of swinging at pitches in the zone has ranged from 70.6% to 74.0%, compared to a major league average of 67.0%. His chase rate has ranged from 37.7% to 39.3%, compared to a major league average of 28.4%.
As we have talked about with guys like Adolis Garcia and Josh Jung, you can have success with such a profile if you do a good job hitting the ball hard and in the air a lot, particularly on the pull side. And that’s what Ezequiel Duran did in 2023 — he hit the ball in the air 60% of the time, with a 29.4% line drive rate. Duran’s hard hit rate and average exit velocity were both in the 65th percentile that year, per Statcast.
Every other year, his hard hit rate and average exit velocity have been well below average, with his hard hit rate being at around the 10th percentile in 2025. In 2025, he was hitting fewer ground balls than in 2022 and 2024, but the result was many more pop ups — right about 1 out of every 6 balls in play from Duran in 2025 resulted in a pop up. His 16.4% pop up rate was almost as high as his 17.8% fly ball rate, which is disastrous. His bat speed also dropped a fair amount in 2025, from right around top third the previous two seasons to below 50%, perhaps in an effort to try to make more contact.
Ezequiel Duran, with his current profile, is an okay bench piece, a functional utility guy who can play all over the infield as well as handling the outfield corners. He’s also fast, generally being in the top 10% or so in sprint speed during his career, per Statcast, and was 11 for 13 stealing bases in 2025.
If he can somehow recapture his ability to damage when he makes contact like he did in 2023 — he had a .415 xwOBA on contact that year, compared to .300 to .314 his other three seasons, and compared to a .369 MLB average — he could be an every day player. Duran has an option remaining, and maybe the best thing for his career, long-term, would be to go to AAA and spend a few months playing every day and getting his offensive rhythm back.
But needs must, and the Rangers need a utility infielder, and that will probably be Ezequiel Duran in the 2026 season. Given the injury history of the left side of the Rangers infield, Duran will likely get some opportunities for regular at bats in 2026 at some point. Whether he takes advantage of them or not will like determine whether he sticks around for a while, or whether he’s a non-tender candidate this winter.
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