It’s time to talk again about Marcell Ozuna of the Atlanta Braves

There is an old saying: “Apologies should be as loud as disrespect was.” To be fair, Marcell Ozuna’s reasons for being disrespected until May of last season were pretty reasonable. After all, he was pretty far into his contract with the Atlanta Braves and not only had he underperformed on the field, but he had plenty of issues off the field as well.

It’s very hard for me personally, as a fan, to support a guy who got into trouble because of the kinds of things Ozuna got into – drunk driving and domestic violence are less considered as “mistakes” as deliberately bad choices. I don’t want to sound like a preacher or saint because I’ve absolutely made a ton of mistakes in my life, but again, there’s a difference between mistakes and choices. You can choose to get home via a friend or Uber and you can choose take the high road when emotions are running high and passionate at home. Honestly, it’s still hard to fix this even now.

That being said, it’s been very nice to see that Marcell Ozuna has stayed out of the TMZ Sports section and local news that doesn’t involve sports for an extended period of time. It’s even better that it coincides with Ozuna suddenly becoming one of the best designated hitters in all of baseball. Last season, Ozuna finished with a .274/.346/.558 slash line with a .381 wOBA, .396 xwOBA and 139 wRC+ over 592 plate appearances. You blinked and suddenly the guy found himself with a 40 home run season! The fact that he was able to finish with such high numbers despite essentially wasting his first 114 plate appearances of the season (through May 15, 2023) with numbers like .172/.274/. 434, .301 wOBA and 86 wRC+ is truly astonishing.

It’s even more incredible when you consider that his numbers in late March/early April 2023 were even more dire since his first month of the season saw him post a pitiful .085/.194/.203 slash line, a wOBA of .188. and a barely believable wRC+ of 10. Ten!!! He was legitimately unplayable for the first month of the season and it would have been completely reasonable for Atlanta to do what Arizona did with Madison Bumgarner and just pay the guy to stay home for the rest of his contract. Instead, you can now make the case that Ozuna actually lived up to the four-year, $64 million contract he signed and it wouldn’t really be ridiculous at all if the Braves exercised the option. club for a fifth season.

His start to the season so far has only strengthened his case for returning for another season. Marcell Ozuna has exploded out of the gates this season and is currently on track for what would be his best season in a Braves uniform – it would easily be his best full season here too, since the monster year he had at home plate was back. the COVID-shortened 2020 season. He hits .315/.396/.646 with a wOBA of .445, an xwOBA of .469, .331 in isolated power and a wRC+ of 190 with 12 home runs already. If you look at his Baseball Savant page right now, it would be like going to a Georgia Bulldogs football game because there is nothing but red as far as the eye can see.

baseballsavant.mlb.com

The only pure DH (I’m leaving out catchers who moonlight as a DH while not behind the plate) who has been better than Ozuna this season is Shohei Ohtani and that’s only because that Ohtani is currently doing his best – Barry Bonds impersonation at the moment. It basically takes a Hall-of-Fame caliber player playing at a Hall-of-Fame caliber level to beat what Ozuna is doing right now.

While it would be easy to just ignore all of this since Marcell Ozuna can just focus on the game instead of what’s going on outside of the game, it seems that in this case the simplest solution is, in fact, the solution. Based on quotes from David O’Brien of The Athletic, it appears Ozuna has truly benefited from simply having peace of mind on the court. The following quote is from April:

“Sometimes you have a complete mindset, you have a burdened mind and you put all these problems in the past. I think now it’s clear. Now I can come every day happy like before. Every day, come happy and play happy when I have the chance. Now I have the opportunity and the chance, so I have to take advantage of it.

This one is from a few weeks later, when it was clear that Ozuna was maintaining his high level of production at the plate:

“I no longer have the same difficulties as before; I don’t have too many things on my mind,” Ozuna said. “Right now I’m playing with a clear mind, which is much better. When you had to go and you heard those boos, that was on my mind. And I said to myself, ‘Just relax and do what you have to do.’ You know you can hit, and they give you the opportunity.

One thing that was consistent between these two quotes is the word “opportunity.” I think it’s obvious by now that I have no sources within the Braves front office and I’m part of a very, very big club in that regard. That being said, I would be willing to argue that in May of last year the team probably gave him a reasonable amount of time to get things done, otherwise he would see either a diminished role or no role at all on the team .

Even with this speculative delay, Brian Snitker kept him in the lineup, his teammates continued to support him (which can be seen in how excited the other players get whenever he comes up big), and ultimately Ozuna is came out of his long seizure and has now since torn the cover off the baseball. Speaking of hitting the ball hard, that was something Ozuna could count on even during the slump – it’s all very simple – almost like something out of a work of baseball fiction. He may have had one last and final opportunity, he took that opportunity and now here we are with Marcell Ozuna, the Super DH.

Even though the key cogs of Atlanta’s roster aren’t firing on all cylinders at the moment, the Braves are still in a very good place right now and their roster has remained in the top 10 in wRC+ and that’s due in large part to the production of Marcell Ozuna. If you had asked me a year ago what the chances were that Ozuna would carry Atlanta’s roster at some point, I probably would have called you a big idiot and gone back to hoping the Braves would just cut him. bait and would be done with this guy. .

Instead, the team is rewarded for its patience and Marcell Ozuna returns the franchise’s faith in him to turn things around, on and off the field. As long as Ozuna can keep this up (and it wouldn’t be shocking if he did) and continue to stay away from off-field drama, it’s a safe bet that he’ll be around for 2025 as well and will continue to be a staple of Atlanta’s roster moving forward. That’s not to say that forgiving some fans is as simple as simply hitting the ball over the fence, but it does mean that Ozuna has done a great job of making sure the focus is on the patience, discipline and time can heal most injuries. that seems to be the case for Ozuna and the Atlanta fan base at this particular moment.