Rest assured, Major League Baseball has still only begun to feel the lasting impact of Juan Soto’s massive contract.
When Soto signed for 15 years, $765 million with the New York Mets on Sunday, he became the highest-paid athlete in the history of professional team sports on a total-value basis. That’s not great news for the Atlanta Braves, who now must face Soto 13 times per season.
The Soto deal stripped away the notion of a luxury tax-driven economy and placed the value of players strictly on how far an ownership group is willing to go to grab a player. And when free agency rolls around in 2025, the Braves could very well be affected.
Designated hitter Marcell Ozuna is set to become a free agent after the season, and coming off a year where he led the Braves in nearly every offensive category, he could strike it big on the open market one more time.
Zachary Rotman of FanSided recently predicted that Atlanta would not keep up in the arms race that ensues for Ozuna next winter, allowing the Dominican slugger to walk somewhere else in MLB.
“Thanks to (Ozuna’s) brilliance at the plate it was an easy decision for the Braves to exercise his $16 million club option to bring him back for 2025, but there’s reason to believe that this is his last season in a Braves uniform,” Rotman wrote.
“Ozuna is 34 years old and, at this point in his career, is a DH only. If he has a repeat of the year he just had or does anything close to it, the Braves almost certainly won’t pay him what he’s worth on the open market (and it’s tough to blame them.)”
Ozuna initially signed a four-year, $65 million contract with the Braves, but by picking up his 2025 club option, the Braves upped the total value of the deal to $81 million. He has 79 home runs since the start of the 2023 season, the fourth-most of any player in baseball.
Given the current state of the market, Ozuna could easily command that same dollar amount on just a three-year deal if he has another year like the one he did in 2024. That would put a lot of strain on the Braves to try and keep him around, assuming that’s something they even want to do.
