Is Marcell Ozuna's new, more patient approach actually an improvement?

Atlanta's most consistent hitter from the last two seasons, Marcell Ozuna has tweaked his approach to walk significantly more this year

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but major league veterans can still surprise you.

In his age-34 season, designated hitter Marcell Ozuna is walking a career-high 20.9% (all stats entering Sunday’s action). While he’s finished three different campaigns with a double-digit walk rate, including a 10.2% rate last year in his MVP-4 finish, he’s never been remotely near this level of collecting free passes.

But is a good thing?

Let’s talk about it.

The changes are in his approach

Put simply, Marcell’s not swinging as much as he usually does, especially if it’s a pitch outside of the zone. He has reduced how much he chases, defined in Statcast as “Out of Zone Swing Percentage”, by 5.2% to a career-low 21.3%.

In his own words, there’s an easy explanation for why he wanted to cut back on chasing out of the zone: “I used to chase too much and get too many strikeouts.”

He’s not wrong - in his last two seasons, where he hit a combined .289 with 79 homers and 204 RBI, he struck out a combined 304 times, a 23.8% rate. This season? 20.9%, not a career-low but his best mark since 2018’s 17.5% with the St. Louis Cardinals.

A byproduct of not chasing as much and consequently getting less whiffs on pitches out of the zone is that career-high walk rate. He doesn’t sound emphatic that he’s trying to walk, though, telling the AJC that “I’m just not getting good pitches to hit.”

Is that true?

He’s seeing more pitches in the zone

Ozuna’s actually seeing more pitches in the zone this season (46%) than he did last year (44.1%).

But the context of those pitches matter.

In 2024, 14.9% of all pitches he saw were fastballs in the zone, followed by 9.5% sinker and 5.7% sliders.

In 2025, pitchers have shifted to more heaters - 17.9% fastballs, 10.3% sinkers, and 6.1% slider.

If you were curious, Ozuna was the best player on the team last season at hitting both fastballs (+16 Run Value) and sliders (+7), although Run Value is an accumulation stat and Ozuna was one of the few Braves to both hit all year and not miss time due to injury. If you look by rate using Run Value per 100 pitches, Austin Riley’s performance versus sinkers is best at 2.5, followed by Ozuna versus sweepers (2.5) and four-seam fastballs (2.0). Next in the list were two slider measures, with Riley at 1.8 and then Ozuna at 1.6.

Okay, so he’s seeing MORE hittable pitches as far as fastballs (of all types) and sliders, all pitches he hits well.

His most significant change is in fewer swings at the first pitch, though - while his chase rate dropped just 5.2%, his first pitch swing rate dropped 13.5% despite seeing almost the same number of strikes (57.6% last year, 56.1% this year). Maybe he’s seeing fewer hittable pitches to open at-bats?

I don’t really think that’s true, either. In 2024, it was 29% four-seam fastballs, followed by 22% sinkers and 15% sliders. This year? 38% four-seam, 24% sinker and 12.8% slider.

I guess this technically depends on his definition of a pitch to hit - is he looking for a center-cut fastball or just something in the zone? I don’t know, but if you’ve seen a recent interview where he talks about this, please send it to me.

Just to be thorough, in 2024 he saw 21 middle-middle fastballs, followed by 8 sliders and 7 sinkers. 49 of the 331 pitches he saw were in attack zone 5 last year, 14.8%, and he hit .500 with a 1.000 slug. This season? 12.6%, consisting of four sinkers, three four-seam fastballs, two sliders, and two cutters. He has four hits on those eleven pitches with a 1.750 slug.

Okay, so despite getting more hittable pitches (in my opinion), we know he’s swinging less at pitches both in and out of the zone, whiffing and striking out less, and walking a lot more.

But is it more valuable from a run-scoring perspective? Let’s look at it.

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Let’s use wOBA

This is the situation that wOBA was designed for. Standing for weighted On-Base Average, this is a modified version of on-base percentage that adjusts for how the player reaches base.

And if you think about it, this makes sense - a walk inherently isn’t as valuable as a home run, so let’s assign different values to each way of reaching on base based on how likely that specific event is to result in a run being scored, on average.

Marcell’s wOBA last season? .395
Marcell’s wOBA this season? .385

So not as valuable….but we have one more variable to remove from this: luck

We’ve talked about this ad nauseam, but random variance in what the defense does, how the ball bounces, etc., can change your results from the deserved stats. So let’s go with expected weighted on-base average, or xwOBA. As with any expected stat, this goes with the characteristics of the batted ball - exit velocity, launch angle, direction, etc - to calculate the likelihood that this particular batted ball would be a hit and then applies the wOBA adjustments to it.

Marcell’s xwOBA last season? .402
Marcell’s xwOBA last season? .404

Roughly the same.

He’s getting on base more, but not doing it via hitting for power. The increased walks and lowered strikeouts roughly make up for the decreased power, with more opportunities on base to get driven in roughly offsetting the guaranteed run a homer brings you.

But I just don’t know if it’s the right approach for this offense.

As I write this, the Braves are down 3-0 to the Pirates in a game where they’ve picked up just four hits through five innings. It’s another quiet day for an offense that’s had way too many of them in the last few weeks. In the month of May, the Braves are 5-4 despite scoring only 27 runs in their nine games, seven of which were one-run games. Three of those wins came in extra innings, with Atlanta leading baseball in both extra innings win total (five) and winning percentage (1.000) despite being just 8-8 in one-run games overall.

Marcell being on base more is objectively a good thing, but not as helpful when he’s backed up by .221 hitting Matt Olson, although Atlanta did flip the order for these two in Sunday’s finale. Walking instead of hitting a double isn’t as helpful when leadoff man Alex Verdugo is 3 for his last 26 (as of the 5th inning on Sunday).

So, to recap: The approach isn’t inherently more or less valuable in a vacuum than what he did last year, but in the context of this season’s struggling offense, it’s hurting the run production more than it did last year.

Do we ask Marcell to change, or do we fix everyone else? Because at the end of the day, the problem is Atlanta’s offense, not Marcell Ozuna’s approach.

At this point, I don’t know which change would be more likely to succeed, but something needs to change.

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