What should we expect from Marcell Ozuna down the stretch?
After being brought in to provide a middle order presence, is Marcell Ozuna finally going to give the St. Louis Cardinals what they’ve been looking for all season?
Marcell Ozuna was brought into be the reliable cog in the middle of the St. Louis Cardinals lineup over the winter. Joining a team with an abundance of good but not great players, the former Marlins outfielder was supposed to hit his way into stardom. Well, things have not gone according to plan for Ozuna or the Cardinals.
In 452 plate appearances this season, the 27-year-old has churned a mediocre .265 AVG/.310 OBP/.389 SLG clip. This slash line is accompanied by a 90 wRC+ and 0.8 fWAR, which is very far from the 142 wRC+ and 4.9 fWAR player he was in 2017.
At best, Ozuna’s peripheral tools (defense and baserunning) are average, so if he is not hitting baseballs hard than he is not a very valuable player. As you can see, he has not been doing the thing that he was brought into do. His slugging percentage is south of .400 and his 13 long balls pale in comparison to the 37 he belted in ’17.
The power has been sapped from his bat, as his ISO (isolated power) has spiraled from a crisp .237 last year to .124 this year. It seems like everyone is waiting for him to flip the switch. They are expecting the light to come on at any second. Digging deeper, however, it is not apparent how bright that light will shine.
For starters, he was aided by an unsustainable .355 BABIP (batting average on balls in play) last season. This year his BABIP is a reasonable .299. Ozuna is hitting with a slightly higher launch angle this year (10.1 in ’17 to 10.6 in ’18), distributing his batted balls nearly identical to 2017.
Oddly, he has a higher average exit velocity in 2018 than 2017 with a comparable Hard Hit%. His Barrel Percentages (the ideal mixture of launch angle and exit velocity) are very similar, as well, but has decreased slightly in 2018.
While the disparity between Ozuna’s xwOBA (.355) and actual wOBA (.306) suggest he has been getting criminally unlucky this campaign, he was probably the recipient of good luck last year. His actual wOBA (.388) was considerably higher than his xwOBA (.366), which means last season was likely an anomaly. Plus, see the BABIP caveat at the top of the blog.
Perhaps the lofty expectations thrust upon right-handed slugger as a St. Louis Cardinal were always unrealistic. Repeating what he did in ’18 was very unlikely to happen. This season, though, was also unlikely to happen. There is no way he should be a 90 wRC+ hitter with the same ISO as Manuel Margot and a worse ISO than Jose Iglesias.
Apparently, he has also been dealing with a shoulder injury since last season. This would be a better explanation if there was a meaningful difference in his quality of contact from last year to this but there is not. He is hitting baseballs with the same ferocity.
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Most likely, the man has been getting extremely unlucky. It seems lazy to come to that conclusion but it is the truth. We should not expect to see 2017 Ozuna or 2018 Ozuna going forward. His true talent level lies somewhere in the middle with a 115-125 wRC+ and 25-30 bombs appearing around what we should expect from him in a perfect world.
ZiPS projection system envisions him posting an 111 wRC+ for the rest of ’18 while Steamer projection system sees a 122 wRC+. That is a pretty vast range but one that is far from his ’17 and ’18 levels of production.
His plate discipline has been different than last year, too. His BB% (walk percentage) has fallen around three percent but so has K% (strikeout percentage). On one hand, he is drawing fewer free bases but, on the other, he is forfeiting fewer free outs. Let’s call it a wash.
Cardinals did what the Nationals could not. dark. Next
Marcell Ozuna has been a prominent face for an underperforming St. Louis Cardinals team. At 57-54, the team is still very much alive and in the race. If the outfielder’s bat could come alive down the stretch, it could create havoc in the National League.