Marcell Ozuna’s departure from Atlanta closed the book on one of the Braves’ most polarizing recent runs, and it ended with a whimper. The Pirates signed Ozuna after the Braves made next to no effort to bring him back, a sharp turn for a player who had once been worth the trouble because of what he did at the plate.
That balance had long defined Ozuna’s time in Atlanta. He was one of the most divisive Braves players in recent memory, and his off-field baggage included multiple arrests during his tenure, among them one for domestic violence. Still, the Braves were willing to keep him as long as he was helping them win, and in 2024 he gave them enough offense to make that calculation easier to live with.
Ozuna said he got off to a fairly good start in 2025 before a hip injury dragged down his production in June and July. That injury was also the explanation Atlanta gave during his final season with the club, when the team said he was playing through hip trouble. By August, though, Ozuna was healthy again and posted a.195/.326/.429 line, good for a.755 OPS, his third-highest mark of the season.
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The late numbers hinted at a player who still had something left, even if the overall shape of the season told a different story. His batting average improved in September, but his OPS kept sliding, and he finished 2025 at.756. That came after a 2024 campaign in which he made a decent run at NL MVP before his bat cratered in a walk year, the kind of collapse that changed how the market saw him almost overnight.
Some people wanted Atlanta to trade Ozuna at the deadline in 2024, but no deal came together. After the season, the Braves barely tried to re-sign him, and his offseason market was described as eerily quiet. The result was a clean ending to a messy tenure: a player once tolerated because he was producing, then edged out when the production faded.
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Ozuna’s final line with Atlanta leaves the Braves with the same calculation that followed him for years. When he was hitting, they could overlook almost everything else. When the bat went cold, there was little left to argue for, and even a healthy stretch late in 2025 was not enough to change that.
