After putting together lousy 2021 and 2022 seasons, against all odds Ozuna assembled a career year in 2023 and will therefore be a lottery ticket in 2024 fantasy drafts.
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To say that Marcell Ozuna caught fantasy owners off guard with his comeback season in 2023 might be an understatement. After two lousy seasons in both 2021 and 2022, there was little reason to think he’d be fantasy relevant – let alone a major contributor – in his age-32 season. He seemed washed up.
Overall, Ozuna’s career has been very up-and-down. He flashed potential in his first four seasons in the major from 2013 to 2016, but didn’t put it all together until his final campaign in Miami in 2017. That year, he seemed to break out as he batted .312 with 37 homers, 124 RBI, 93 runs scored, and a wRC+ of 143; all of those figures were career bests at the time. Although his hard-hit rate came in at a career-high 39%, his contact rate dipped slightly to 74% as his ability to put the bat on the ball inside the zone (84% z-contact%) slumped. His barrel rate wasn’t great at 8.5% and a 23.5% HR/FB after it never came in north of 17% to that point in his career was suspect.
After his seeming breakout campaign, Ozuna was curiously traded to the Cardinals for a haul that included Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen. He underwhelmed in his two seasons with the Redbirds, never hitting more than 29 bombs in a season and having his wRC+ come in at 107 in 2018 and 110 in 2019. Ozuna’s average dipped to just .241 in 2019 in large part because of poor luck, as his .257 BABIP was easily a career low; his 23.5% liner rate was – and remains – a career high. Ozuna made a ton of hard contact in St. Louis, with his 45% hard-hit rate in 2018 and his 48% in 2019 ranking in his top three hard-hit rates in a season. His barrel rate actually climbed as well, to just over 9% in 2018 and then to nearly 12% in 2019.
After his underwhelming two seasons with the Cardinals, Ozuna moved on in 2020 and signed a one-year deal with Atlanta. He was incredible in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign as he batted .338 with 56 RBI, and 38 runs scored across 267 PA, with a wRC+ of 178. It is dangerous to put too much stock into an abbreviated campaign that featured less than half the games of a regular MLB season, but it was encouraging to see Ozuna compile a career-high 15.5% barrel rate to go with a 46% hard-hit rate. There were some red flags, though, as his contact rate reached a career-low 70% while his swinging-strike rate came in at a career-worst 13.5% and his 22.5% strikeout rate was his highest since 2014. A .391 BABIP indicated that the high average was fluky, as Ozuna’s career BABIP is just .307. Even so, Atlanta re-signed him to a four-year deal in advance of the 2021 campaign.
While there was some skepticism surrounding him in fantasy circles in advance of the 2021 campaign, his ADP was inside the top 50. 2021 quickly became a season to forget for Ozuna and those who drafted him in fantasy, as he was sidelined for a while after he fractured two fingers while sliding into a base in May. Then, he missed the end of the campaign while on administrative leave under MLB’s domestic violence policy; that was retroactively made into a twenty-game suspension. When on the field, Ozuna wasn’t good, as he hit just .213 with 7 dingers, 26 RBI, and 21 runs scored across only 208 PA, with a wRC+ of 74. His hard-hit rate crashed to just 28% and he recorded a career-low 80% z-contact%.
Uncertainty understandably surrounded Ozuna as the 2022 campaign began. There was some question, in fact, about whether he would be on the Braves’ roster after what had happened the year before. His performance did not engender optimism, as Ozuna hit just .226 with 23 homers, 56 RBI, and 56 runs scored across 507 PA, with another subpar wRC+ of 89. His strikeout rate ticked upward to 24% and his hard-hit rate only rebounded modestly, to 33.5%. He seemed to press at the dish, as his chase rate was a career high at just over 36%. The club reportedly shopped him at the trade deadline but didn’t find a suitable deal. Ozuna also lost playing time down the stretch after a DUI arrest in August.
Given the turmoil of his 2021 and 2022 seasons, Ozuna’s resurgence in 2023 was utterly surprising. In 592 PA, he hit .274 with a career-high 40 dingers, 100 RBI, and 84 runs scored, with a wRC+ of 139 that was the third highest of his career. He tempered his strikeout rate to 22.5% while posting a robust 41.5% hard-hit rate and logging a career-best 16.5% barrel rate. His 75% contact rate was his best since 2018 while he did reduce his chase rate to close to the league average at 32.5%. His 25% HR/FB, though, is likely due for regression as it’s his third-highest mark in a season in that department, behind only his otherworldly 2020 campaign and just above that from his first breakout season back in 2017 with the Marlins.
It's telling that I can’t honestly sit here and ask if Ozuna is “back.” He’s now posted three excellent seasons in his eleven years of big-league action. Most of his work otherwise was… alright. 2021 and 2022 were awful. Some regression does seem likely in 2024 as Ozuna enters his age-33 season, but bear in mind that he’ll likely be especially motivated as this will be the last year of his four-year deal with Atlanta, although there is a club option for 2025. As he was in 2018 and 2021, Ozuna is a bit of a lottery ticket in fantasy drafts in 2024 and I would not overpay for him on draft day.
Photo credit: David from Washington, DC, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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