the part between commas is appostive modifier ." a fierce competitor driven by a will to succeed and inspiring to fans and opponents alike" should have parallel structure. it should be X and Y where X and Y are paraller.
Only A has that structure where inspiring is a gerund (vebas noun) that is parallel to the a fierce competitor.

kushal.adhia wrote:A group of sportswriters recently named Scott Smith, a fierce competitor driven by a will to succeed and inspiring to fans and opponents alike, as the best pitcher in professional baseball today.


A. Inspiring

B. Inspired

C. Inspires

D. Is inspiring

E. He inspired


OA is A

I chose D. Why is it wrong?

Kushal

"and" is used to connect two independent sentences. Further, parallelism gods mandate that these two independent clauses should have the same structure.

The learning here is that it is okay for a past participle (driven) to be parallel with a present participle(inspiring).

in D, driven is parallel to is inspiring

Thus, A is the correct answer.

mohit11 wrote:
The learning here is that it is okay for a past participle (driven) to be parallel with a present participle(inspiring).

Nope.

inspiring is not the present participle but the gerund here. consequently driven and inspiring are not parallel.

The parallel segments of the appositive are -
Scott Smith
- a fierce competitor driven by a will to succeed
and
- inspiring to fans and opponents alike

I must say the use of the gerund looks terrible here. The noun an inspiration would have been so much better in place of the gerund inspiring.