Atlanta’s designated hitter followed-up a landmark season with an All-Star campaign in 2024.
After a 2023 season that saw him turn around what could have been a downward-plunging career and post 3.2 fWAR with an elite batting line, Marcell Ozuna outdid himself in 2024, gathering 4.7 fWAR (his best mark since 2017) and once again putting up one of the game’s best batting lines, easily becoming the game’s best DH not named Shohei Ohtani.
How acquired?
Ozuna signed with Atlanta Braves as a free agent in January 2020 after two seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals. A 2008 international signing by the then Florida Marlins, Ozuna re-signed with the Braves in 2021 with a four-year contract worth $65 million. However, the Braves have since picked up his club option for $16 million for the 2025 season, the book closes on him having secured a five-year, $80 million contract instead.
What were the expectations?
The 2024 Braves lineup appeared to be one of the most formidable in the National League. Ozuna was expected to be a middle-of-the-order bat providing power while serving as the teams primary — if not exclusive — designated hitter. After a disastrous start to his 2023 season, Ozuna surged, providing optimism that his 2024 season could yield similar results. He actually underhit his .393 xwOBA last year, and there was little reason to think he’d get derailed other than the standard aging and regression to the mean concerns. Those concerns, though, were not insubstantial — for example, ZiPS had him with just a 112 OPS+ central projection, and just 1.5 WAR totaled in about 500 PAs. Of course, he blew those marks out of the water.
2024 results
Ozuna topped his 2023 performance wRC+ wise, going from 140 to 154. He played in all 162 games and undershot his 2023 homer total by one, but his .302/.378/.546 line was his best in a single season aside from the short 2020 campaign, where he had an absurd 178 wRC+.
Ozuna once again underhit his xwOBA, which was an elite .402. Only six guys in baseball finished above him in that regard; only eight had an xwOBA at or above .400.
Despite having a power outage toward the end of the season, he still finished in the top five of a slew of offensive categories in the National League. That included finishing third in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, and hits. He finished second in total bases and home runs.
What went right?
Ozuna was selected to his third All-Star Game – his first with Atlanta – and finished fourth in the National League Most Valuable Player vote. For stretches throughout the season, he was the only consistent performer on offense as injuries and underperformance hampered the team’s lineup, but somehow avoided touching him.
For Ozuna, the gains this year were about two things: more consistently hitting the ball harder (a hard-hit rate of 53.5 percent, 96th percentile in MLB), and more consistently hitting it at a beneficial angle — something that the Braves don’t really preach, but that Ozuna managed to do anyway. Given that Ozuna’s contact rate actually cratered this year, it seems like he improved on his 2023 by acting not just that hitting the ball hard was a requirement for him to offer, but that hitting the ball hard at a useful angle was what he was looking to do.
Unlike last year, where he mostly did the Ozuna thing of sitting on and whacking fastballs, he diversified this year. In 2023, he was meh on an xwOBA basis against sliders and changeups, and was often mystified by curveballs, largely because he was geared up to put the hurt on something hard and relatively straight. In 2024, though, his lowest xwOBA against the six pitches he saw most often was .377 (compared to .287 against curves last year); the split-finger was the only pitch he struggled with. Basically, it was an even more dominant year from Ozuna than it appeared, because he had everything covered, especially from righties — his xwOBA against lefties was actually a middling .356.
Oh, and he delivered perhaps the signature hit for the Braves in 2024, one of the highest WPA swings this franchise has ever had:
What went wrong?
Probably the most notable thing here is that whether for reasons of fatigue, adjustment, or just plain ol’ baseball stuff, Ozuna kind of slid down the stretch. He had “just” a 117 wRC+ in September, but the real blow was that after four straight months with a .400+ xwOBA, it sagged to “just” .337 in August (and then in the .370s for September).
But realistically, outside of Ohtani, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge, Ozuna was in the conversation of the best offensive performers in baseball.
Still, he wasn’t immune to bad games. A particularly nasty one came on June 29, a 2-1 win over the Pirates, where he hit into double plays his first two times up, and struck out the other two times. He also got beat here in a pretty big game; one of the few times a righty was able to make him look terrible in a key situation:
2025 outlook
The Big Bear returning to Atlanta for 2025 is one less line-up hole the team has to fill, and for Ozuna, it is a chance to have another All-Star-level season and hit free agency with what would likely be his last chance to have a big payday. If the 34-year-old can replicate the results of his last two campaigns, both parties would be thrilled, given the elite offensive production leading to an above-average, if not All-Star-level season despite no defensive contribution whatsoever.
Could Ozuna see a limited amount of time in the field, barring a serious of injuries that rival 2024? Probably not, but off-season videos seem to show Ozuna slimmed down, so having him available to play a limited number of games in left field shouldn’t completely be ruled out.
Something to keep an eye on, in regard to Ozuna and playing the field, is how Ronald Acuña, Jr. is handled once he returns. If the organization feels Acuña needs to spend an occasional day at designated hitter, and if Ozuna is performing at a high-level offensively, there could be a temptation by the organization to play Ozuna in left field.
ZiPS has bumped up its point estimate for Ozuna on the heels of 2024, towards a 120ish OPS+, but of course we just saw that sort of thing play out last year. Steamer is fairly similar, so while Ozuna has some regression to fight against, he might do so with great effectiveness once again.