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We’re like one good week away from my whole online persona being Caleb Durbin-is-actually-better-than-Alex Bregman propaganda. And the industry is absolutely booming.
On Monday night, Durbin jacked an eighth inning, go-ahead home run over the Green Monster to win the Boston Red Sox their 14th consecutive game — 14!!! It is an unfathomable, inconcievable and utterly impossible turn of events for a player who was written off by me and many others. The Boston Red Sox are unstoppable, and Durbin stocks are through the roof:
For self-aggrandizing Boston Red Sox fans and emerging Craig Breslow apologists like myself, the third base position has become a full-blown cultural touchstone. It all began two offseasons ago, when the Boston brain trust decided that Rafael Devers was no longer a functional defender at the hot corner. Asking him to play first base kicked off the mother of all cursed trade sagas that saw the Red Sox refuse to pay Bregman his desired extension and offload Devers for (eventually) Caleb Durbin.
Caleb Durbin was not welcomed warmly as Boston's third baseman
It was a public relations catastrophe. Devers was Boston’s name-brand franchise player, even if he was no longer their best player in reality. Bregman had an excellent season in his place, and was essentially the team's only consistent non-Roman Anthony hitter in 2025. Meanwhile, nobody in Boston had ever heard of Durbin, a pretty good second-year third baseman from Milwaukee.
It didn’t start out well; on May 21, I called Durbin “inarguably the worst hitter in baseball,” which was absolutely correct when I wrote it. Bregman, meanwhile, started out pretty hot but has cooled way off — while Durbin slowly but surely made his way back to the mean. They are, at least in terms of statistical profile, extraordinarily similar.
Both are borderline-elite defensively, while both are (on balance) slightly below-average hitters; Durbin walks much less than Bregman but provides much more baserunning value. Queue Brad Pitt: “We can’t replace [Bregman] but we can recreate him on the aggr—well, just with Caleb Durbin. Wow, that’s way easier.”
Crazily, Durbin has been way more valuable than Bregman because of his price
The problem for the Bregman Believers is the contract: Bregman is in the first year of a five-year, $175 million deal. Durbin, meanwhile, makes a pre-arbitration salary of $796,000. Bregman is, according to his contract, worth 33.04 Caleb Durbins. In reality, he's basically just one. Major W for the Durbin Dudes.
You could easily critique Boston still, arguing that they are unnecessarily moneyballing when they're, ya know, the Red Sox — and you don't get extra points in an uncapped system for paying identical players less. But that ship has sailed; the Red Sox are not run like the New York Yankees anymore. If this is how things are going to happen, this is the way to do it.
The other issue for the Bregman Believers is the question of who each guy actually is. I just said that both are slightly below-average hitters, but in the last 40ish games, Durbin has actually been a great hitter after being, say it with me now, “inarguably the worst hitter in baseball” for the first chunk of the season. Bregman, meanwhile, has just been on a slow slide down to mediocrity.
But is it fair to say that Bregman, an All-Star who has concerningly declined a bit but could totally bounce back to form, is actually this mediocre? Is it fair to Durbin to say that he is truly a great hitter or a terrible hitter, or merely that he is the average of both even when he has never been average all year? His averageness is merely the result of two extremes. The answer is that both guys are both versions of themselves; they are Schrödinger’s Third Basemen, and it isn’t this or that. It just … is.
Whatever the reason, Durbin’s rise has uncorked the Red Sox in a shockingly predictable way. I have been saying for months that Boston had solid underlying numbers but was suffering from mind-numbingly bad performances from a few players. Trevor Story, Durbin two months ago and now Jarren Duran are three such examples of black holes in the batting order. Solving two of them with Story’s utility replacements and Durbin’s ascent have brought the offense closer to where it needs to be: average, to take advantage of godlike pitching. That is a thesis I can invest in.
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This article was originally published on fansided.com as Caleb Durbin has unlocked the unstoppable Red Sox with a near-perfect Alex Bregman impression.
