Brave Transactions: Patient Front Office Seals Deal With Ozuna

On Friday evening the Atlanta Braves announced that they:

• signed OF Marcell Ozuna to a 4-year, $65 million deal with a $16 million fifth year option

• designated OF Kyle Garlick for assignment

With pitchers and catchers expected to report to to Atlanta’s North Port facility in a week, fans have understandably become nervous about the large, Marcell Ozuna-shaped hole in the line-up. As other potential left fielders such as George Springer, Michael Brantley, Joc Pederson, and Eddie Rosario started signing with teams, that nervousness approached panic.

Well, crisis averted.

Marcell Ozuna will resume his comfortable spot in the batting order behind NL MVP Freddie Freeman in the Braves line-up as well as his spot as a team leader and mentor for the Braves Latino players. He will also resume his spot in left field, a position he only occupied for 19 out of 60 games in 2020 as his poor defensive play had the team employing him primarily as the designated hitter. The defensive concerns were enough to make outside observers wonder if the inability for MLB and the player’s union to agree on the universal DH rule for 2021 would forestall Atlanta’s interest in re-signing Ozuna. Those concerns are still there, but in the end the team decided the line-up hole was simply too big and for his part Ozuna seemed to truly desire coming to a place where he and his family could spread roots.

The Breakdown

Ozuna recently turned 30 years old and his bat has been aging like a fine whiskey, each year gaining flavor and complexity. And by flavor and complexity I mean home runs and walks. Look, work with me here people.

The advanced metrics love Ozuna at the plate — he ranks in the top 20 in all of baseball since the start of the 2019 season in average exit velocity, barrels and barrel percentage, and hard hit percentage — which are all fancy ways of saying he strikes the ball very, very hard.

Add to that a more mature approach at the plate that has allowed him to add 33 points to his on-base percentage over the previous six seasons of his career and you get one of the most dangerous hitters in baseball. That played out as plainly as you could possibly see in 2020 as Ozuna lead the NL in home runs and RBI, and was third in baseball behind only Washington’s Juan Soto and teammate and MVP Freddie Freeman in wRC+.

While it may be to much too hope that Ozuna can replicate this over the course of a full-sized season, there’s nothing to indicate in his batting profile that he should drop too much either and at age 30 this should still be considered Ozuna’s prime.

That said, what value he brings to the line-up he gives at least some of it back in the field. Ozuna was astonishingly bad in left field and even worse in the few games that the team tried him out in right field. In the playoffs after Adam Duvall was felled by a strained oblique, the team didn’t appear to even consider playing him in left field, opting instead to move Austin Riley to the outfield and starting Johan Camargo.

The Braves are no doubt hoping that a last-minute change of circumstances between MLB and the player’s union will bring back the universal DH for 2021 so they can once again hide Ozuna’s glove, but if not they will have to hope that Ozuna can be at least serviceable in the field in 2021. Ozuna played all 60 games in 2020, but has battled injuries during much of the prior two seasons in St. Louis; having to play the field increases the chance of that becoming an issue again.

The Big Picture

It was said that Ozuna was looking initially for a deal of at least four years that would pay him $20-22 million a year. The Braves have not been keen to sign anyone other than core franchise players like Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies to long-term deals since Alex Anthopoulos took over the front office in November 2017, so there was some doubt if Ozuna and Atlanta would be a match. Add in the Braves clear desire to be a top-notch defensive ballclub and that further made a re-union unlikely.

Instead, the market for Ozuna never seemed to materialize in the way that you would expect for a player with his recent success. The uncertainty around the universal DH certainly played a part in that. Most contending American League teams that actually were willing to spend money this offseason already had a DH option on hand, and one of the ones that were looking for a DH solved that problem when the Minnesota Twins re-upped with Nelson Cruz early last week.

Based on the final agreed-upon deal, it looks like the length of the contract meant more to Ozuna than the average annual value; in fact, Ozuna will end up taking a $6 million pay cut from his 2020 one-year Braves contract (though the pandamic shutdown and the prorating of salaries as a result means that Ozuna took in far less last year).

For Atlanta, the signing means they won’t have to go through their annual ritual for finding a new right-handed power hitter to put behind Freeman in the line-up for at least four years, and they do so with a team-friendly contract. The deal is not without risks however, the primary one being that the new CBA somehow does not bring the DH rule to the National League and Ozuna will continue to have to play a position.

That said, the structure of the contract — $12 million in 2021, $16 million in 2022, $18 million in 2023 and 24 apiece — is friendly enough that it shouldn’t interfere with Atlanta’s efforts to keep their young core players and if for some reason the DH is not instituted for 2022 and beyond the terms are good enough that it should be easy to find a trade partner if the team feels like they have to improve team defense.

But those are worries for a future that may never come to pass. For now Braves fans should rejoice. The team is re-loaded and ready for another World Series run.

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