When Jurickson Profar led Monday's game against the Brewers with a homer, it was a very welcome sight for Atlanta Braves fans. While the Braves did not win the game, Profar's performance out of the leadoff spot overall was what everyone was hoping for when Atlanta signed him last offseason. Unfortunately, that performance has been the exception to the rule in Profar's first season with the Braves.
The obvious disappointment with Profar that first comes to mind is his suspension for PEDs and that is completely fair. While Profar has professed ignorance to how he could have gotten any banned substance into his system and denied doing so knowingly, a certain amount of skepticism should come from anyone that is looking to prolong their career and got caught red-handed.
Profar's suspension alone is enough to consider signing him a mistake. However, when you take that in combination with some truly troubling trends with his batted ball metrics, you have the recipe for a deal that could go down as one of the worst in Braves history.
Unless he turns things around, Jurickson Profar may go down as one of the worst Braves contracts ever
When Profar's quality of contact was less than ideal for the first couple of weeks after he returned, that could be chalked up to rust after his 80 game absence. It takes guys a while to build up their strength and stamina and unfortunately, his suspension meant that there was always going to be a delay in getting up to speed.
However, Profar has 27 games under his belt now and not only have the results been most bad, but they have been getting worse lately. Even with a homer and two walks on Monday, Profar still only has a .776 OPS over his last seven games including hitting just .233 during that span. After posting above to great batted ball metrics with the Padres last season, Profar's average exit velo, hard hit rate, expected batting average, and expected wOBA have all cratered. He still doesn't swing and miss often and draws walks, but the quality of contact has been largely bad.
It is easy to think that the reason for Profar's regression is because he is no longer on the juice. However, with his chronic knee issues and at his age, it is just possible that the Braves bought him past his prime. Bad deals like the ones handed out to BJ Upton and Derek Lowe ended up being disappointing, but between the $15 million a year he is making, how not tradable he is likely to be, and the the PED suspension, it is looking more and more like Profar is going to go down as what the Braves' worst signings of all time and could be even worse those deals before it is all said and done.