How do you solve a problem like Ozuna’s upcoming free agent contract?

Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesThe Braves’ 2020 season is kaput, and with it, their contractual hold on one of the most bizarre-but-exhilarating baseballing humans: Marcell Ozuna. In true Ozuna fashion, his pandemic-shortened season was straight nonsense, but the good kind. He set career highs in basically every rate-based offensive statistic except strikeouts (just a bit off) and put up 2.5 fWAR over 60 games and 267 PAs, matching his 2019 production over 130 games. Notably, that 2.5 fWAR came after incurring the wrath of the designated hitter penalty in WAR for much of the year; given his DRS (-2) and UZR (-2.7), as well as his OAA (-1), and the fact that he was mostly dinged for his bad arm, it’s actually possible he would’ve generated a bit more value for himself (if not for his team) if playing the field. (And then we get on the tangent of the designated hitter penalty for batters... but we’ve got stuff to get through! No time for that.)

…