Stuart Fairchild absolutely crushed a 91 mph cutter from Red Sox closer Kenley Jansen.
Red Sox' Jarren Duran leaps at the wall to rob a homer from Stuart Fairchild in the ninth
It left Fairchild’s bat at 100.2 mph and traveled 408 feet to center field.
“I thought that ball was way gone,” manager Alex Cora said. “I just kept saying, ‘Get down. Get down. Get down.’”
Jarren Duran sprinted back to the center field wall, leaped and took away what would have been a game-tying homer. Instead it was the second out of the ninth. The Red Sox held on to win 4-3 over the Reds here at Great American Ball Park on Saturday.
“I knew he hit it pretty good so I was just making sure that I was going to get back to the wall,” Duran said. “I took a last-minute glance of where the wall was before I got to it.”
Duran thought it was gone off the bat.
“The ball flies really good here,” Duran said. “We kind of learned that the first day because I’ve never played here before. So I kind of learned that if a ball feels like it’s hit good, it’s probably got a good chance to get out of here. So I was making sure I got to the wall. And if it was short of the wall, then I can adjust off. But I was just making sure I got to the wall.”
Duran started in left field. Cora moved him to center field and center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela to shortstop in the middle of the seventh. Cora made several defensive switches after he had Romy Gonzalez and Tyler O’Neill pinch hit in the top of the seventh inning.
“Good for him, too, because you move them around in the middle of the game, it’s not that easy,” Cora said. “And to have the presence of mind to find the wall and jump, that was good.”
Duran also scored the go-ahead run in the eighth inning on Rafael Devers’ 229-foot fly ball in foul territory in left field. Duran beat Fairchild’s throw, which bounced a couple of times on the way to the plate.
Duran said he knew he was going “right away” when Devers hit it.
“Huddy (third base coach Kyle Hudson) was in my ear,” Duran said. “He was like, ‘Hey, we’re going, we’re going, we’re going, we’re going.’ So I was fully committed to going home.”
