Marcell Ozuna is, at minimum, a polarizing figure among Atlanta Braves fans. Some have chosen to focus on his production on the field when he was one of the better hitters in all of baseball. Others cannot forget or forgive his off-the-field legal problems and how they impacted the Braves as a franchise. Many are somewhere in-between, but there is usually a lean one way or another. However, most agree that the current version of Ozuna, who just signed with the Pirates, may not be what Pittsburgh is hoping for.
While there is always a risk that Ozuna gets in more trouble, the odds are pretty good that he knows his career is on thin ice and is going to do his best to avoid mugshots and be a good influence in the Pirates' clubhouse. However, there is one thing that the power of positive thinking can't fix and that Braves fans already know all to well: Ozuna just isn't good anymore.
If the Pirates are banking on Marcell Ozuna to save their offense, Braves fans should send their condolences
Reasonable people can disagree about Ozuna's legal troubles and subsequent character rehabilitation and forgiveness, but signing him also has some baseball reasons for being awfully risky. If Ozuna was likely to be a good hitter in 2026, you would think that Atlanta would have worked harder to try to keep him around.
A closer look at Ozuna's already questionable numbers reveals a number of concerns. One of the excuses given for Ozuna's 2025 drop-off was that he was playing through a hip injury early in the season, and that he slowly got healthier and healthier. However, Ozuna's .743 OPS in the second half was worse than what he did in the first half, with only his slugging ticking slightly up over his first half numbers.
Ozuna's advanced metrics are a little weird. The good news is that he doesn't chase out of the zone anymore and does draw his fair share of walks. However, Ozuna's quality of contact metrics all took a big step back in 2025 over his previous marks, and the strikeouts tended to pile up as he was getting beat in the zone much more often.
So you have an aging slugger who is making less contact, even less good contact, and who has no defensive value whatsoever and is also coming off an injury. You don't have to have any feelings at all about Ozuna the human to understand that Ozuna the baseball player isn't one that you can hang your hat on anymore, and the Pirates are (probably) about to find that out firsthand.