Braves' Marcell Ozuna Speaks Out on Entering 2025 Contract Year

Atlanta Braves designated hitter Marcell Ozuna addressed his pending MLB free agency with The AJC's Ken Sugiura at Spring Training.

Atlanta Braves designated hitter Marcell Ozuna | Denis Poroy-Imagn Images

The Atlanta Braves exercising designated hitter Marcell Ozuna's $16 million club option for 2025 was a no-brainer. Whether or not he will be back with the Braves in 2026, though, is a more complicated question.

Ozuna will be an unrestricted free agent at 35 years old this winter. He may need to repeat his All-Star 2024 season in order to land another contract with the Braves.

But Ozuna insisted in an interview with The AJC's Ken Sugiura that he is not focused on anything beyond this season.

“I don’t think on that,” Ozuna told Sugiura on his free agency. “I just come in and give you my best, as usual, and then play the game, just have fun.

Anything more and Ozuna suggested the outside noise will have a player gripping the bat a little too tight.

“Yeah, because you put pressure on yourself,” he added. “I don’t put pressure. I just go.”

The Braves shouldn't want Ozuna to change a thing after last season. He slashed .302/.378/.546 with 39 home runs and 31 doubles. The designated hitter posted 104 RBI and 96 runs as well.

Since the beginning of May 2023, Ozuna has been one of baseball's best hitters. He hit .297 with a .969 OPS and 38 home runs in the final 126 games of the 2023 season. Ozuna then carried that strong performance at the plate into 2024.

Ozuna mentioned to Sugiura that he is only getting better. The statistics suggest that. If Ozuna starts April strongly, there's little to suggest that Ozuna isn't in the best two-year stretch of his career.

Contracts are always complicated for players in their mid-thirties. MLB teams don't want to offer long-term deals to players that age.

But if Ozuna doesn't show signs of slowing down in 2025, then the Braves might very well open the wallet for the designated hitter.

Of course, the opposite could happen as well, and Ozuna could price himself out of Atlanta as Freddie Freeman, Dansby Swanson, and Max Fried did.

The Braves would love to have that problem, though, because it means Ozuna would have posted another very strong stat line in 2025.