With each passing series, this Atlanta Braves season turns into an even bigger disaster.
Atlanta was walked off by the last-place Athletics on Thursday night, marking their . They’ve now tied a season-worst 12 games under .500, and they’re 10 games back of a potential playoff spot.
It’s looking for all the world as though the Braves will have to sell at the trade deadline now, as much as that possibility would have seemed laughable at the beginning of the season. And worse still, they don’t have much talent to unload.
However, Christopher Kline of FanSided thinks one veteran’s days in Atlanta are likely numbered.
On Friday, Kline wrote that designated hitter Marcell Ozuna’s Braves tenure was “in more danger than ever before,” seemingly predicting that he’d be traded by the Jul. 31 deadline.
“The odds of an Ozuna trade have been slowly ticking up for months now. He remains one of Atlanta’s best hitters, but his production has declined meaningfully compared to his last couple of seasons,” Kline wrote.
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“Moreover, there is only so much value in a mid-30s DH who cannot field and Atlanta was never going to pay the going rate for Ozuna in free agency. If this was one final go-around with a shot at the World Series, that would be one thing. But with their postseason hopes fading fast, the Braves would almost be irresponsible not to gauge the market for Ozuna.”
This season, Ozuna owns a .748 OPS and only 12 home runs in 88 games. That’s not the type of production you’re looking for in a full-time DH, and might make it difficult to find a team willing to take on his $16 million salary.
On the whole, the five-year, $80 million contract the Braves gave Ozuna has paid off. But it looks as though his tenure could end on a sour note.
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