Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
| Full Name | Marcell Ozuna |
| Born | Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, November 12, 1990 |
| Position | Designated Hitter (DH) / Outfielder |
| All-Star appearances | Three (2017, 2023, 2024) |
| Braves contract signed | 2020 — four years, $64 million |
| Contract AAV | $16 million per year |
| 2024 home runs | 39 (4th in NL MVP voting) |
| 2025 home runs | 21 (hip injury impacted full season) |
| 2025 batting average | .232 |
| 2025 OPS | ~.755 |
| June–July 2025 batting avg. | .181 (worst stretch of the season) |
| Was Ozuna placed on waivers? | No — he was never waived |
| How did the Braves separate from Ozuna? | Contract expired naturally after 2025 season |
| Did the Braves re-sign him? | No — Atlanta moved on via free agency |
| New team (2026) | Pittsburgh Pirates |
| Pittsburgh contract | 1 year, $12 million — mutual option for 2027 |
| Braves GM | Alex Anthopoulos |
| Age at start of 2026 season | 35 |
| Nickname | The Big Bear |
The Rumor That Ran Faster Than the Facts
During the summer of 2025, a phrase started bouncing around baseball social media, fan forums, and sports talk shows.
“Braves Marcell Ozuna waiver candidate.”
People said it like it was a done deal. Like Atlanta had already decided. Like the Big Bear was about to be cut loose mid-season, sent through waivers, and claimed by some desperate team needing a power bat.
Here’s the truth. It never happened.
Ozuna finished the 2025 season as a Brave. His contract expired naturally. He entered free agency. Then he signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates in February 2026.
But the conversation that built up around the waiver idea — why it started, what drove it, and what it says about how Atlanta evaluates their roster — that’s the real story. And it’s worth understanding properly.
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Who Is Marcell Ozuna? The Player Behind the Debate
Before we get into the waiver mechanics and the 2025 season drama, let’s establish who we’re actually talking about.
Marcell Ozuna is one of the best power hitters of his generation. He grew up in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and worked his way through the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals systems before landing in Atlanta.
He’s a three-time All-Star. He has a swing that generates genuine fear in pitchers when things are clicking. He plays the DH role exclusively at this stage of his career, which means every at-bat he takes is evaluated with strict scrutiny — no defensive value, just bat.
The nickname “The Big Bear” isn’t just about size. It’s about presence. When Ozuna is locked in, his bat covers the entire zone. He can hit the inside pitch, the outside pitch, and chase sliders down at the knees that he shouldn’t even be able to reach. He’s that kind of hitter.
But Marcell Ozuna also carries a complicated personal history — a 2020 arrest and MLB suspension that hung over his name for years — and a career that has shown the kind of peaks and valleys that make front offices nervous when the contract starts getting heavy.
The 2020 Contract and What It Promised
When the Braves signed Ozuna before the 2021 season, it was a clear statement of intent.
Four years. $64 million. $16 million per year.
Atlanta was telling the league — and their own fans — that this was a cornerstone piece of a championship-level roster. They expected middle-of-the-order production. They expected home runs in the 30+ range. They expected the kind of presence that would protect Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson in the lineup and force opposing managers to make uncomfortable decisions.
And for several years, the contract was delivered.
Ozuna’s 2023 and 2024 seasons were genuinely impressive. In 2024, he hit 39 home runs and finished fourth in NL MVP voting. That kind of production from a DH-only player is remarkable. He was earning his money.
Then 2025 arrived. And things got messy.
The 2025 Season: What Went Wrong
The hip injury is where you have to start.
Ozuna entered 2025 already managing physical concerns. The hip was a persistent issue that limited his explosiveness at the plate — the hip rotation that generates power in a swing isn’t something you can fake through willpower alone.
The numbers showed it. By mid-June, Ozuna was hitting .181 in a stretch that ran through July. That kind of slump from a DH-only player puts a roster in real trouble. There’s no defensive position to hide him in. Either the bat works or the roster spot becomes unjustifiable.
He finished the season with 21 home runs and a .232 batting average with an OPS around .755. Compared to his 2024 campaign, those numbers represent a sharp decline. Still not a replacement-level player — 21 home runs from a DH is usable — but significantly below what $16 million per year is supposed to buy.
The Braves themselves were struggling as a team. The 2025 season didn’t go according to plan in Atlanta. A team with multiple All-Stars and a high payroll found itself on the outside of the playoff picture as August arrived, triggering exactly the kind of roster review that produces waiver speculation.
Why Bleacher Report Named Him a Waiver Candidate
This is where the public conversation really took off.
Bleacher Report’s Kerry Miller published an analysis around the August 31 trade deadline discussing prime waiver wire candidates. Ozuna was named alongside Raisel Iglesias.
The logic was sound, even if the outcome never materialized. Here’s what Miller and others were pointing at:
Ozuna had an expiring contract. The Braves had no chance of making the playoffs. He was a veteran with declining production. His hip limited his second-half value. And teams looking for power bat upgrades at the waiver deadline could potentially claim him and absorb what was left of his salary.
The analysis was conditional — “here’s who could move” rather than “here’s who will move.” But once the name appeared on a published waiver candidate list from a major platform, it spread rapidly through fan communities as if it were a done deal.
It wasn’t.
How MLB Waivers Actually Work
This is the part that a lot of baseball fans — even experienced ones — find confusing.
When a team places a player on waivers, they’re putting that player through a formal process where every other team in the league has 47 hours to claim him. If nobody claims him, the team can trade him to any team they want or simply release him outright.
If someone does claim him, the claiming team must absorb the full remaining salary. For a player like Ozuna with $16 million on the books, the claiming team would need to be willing and able to absorb that cost.
There’s also a no-trade clause element. Players with certain years of service and contractual protections can block trades and waiver claims. Ozuna’s no-trade clause was specifically cited in multiple analyses as a reason why moving him at the 2025 deadline was complicated even if Atlanta had wanted to do it.
The point: waivers are a roster management tool for players already under contract. When Ozuna’s deal expired after 2025, he became a free agent automatically. No waivers needed. No formal process required. He simply reached the open market.
What the Braves Were Actually Doing
Here’s the accurate picture of Atlanta’s front office thinking during this period.
Alex Anthopoulos and the Braves were doing what every smart front office does during a season that isn’t going according to plan. They were evaluating. They were stress-testing every contract and roster spot against the question: “Is this the best use of this roster position?”
Ozuna came up in those conversations. Of course he did. A player making $16 million who is producing at a meaningfully lower rate than his peak, while also managing a hip injury, is going to come up in internal reviews.
That evaluation — that consideration — is what leaked into public discourse and became a “waiver candidate.”
The Braves also looked at what releasing or waiving Ozuna would actually accomplish. The salary savings were there in theory. But they would have been paying some of that money regardless. And removing Ozuna meant relying on younger, less experienced options in a spot that still required some production.
They also considered the clubhouse dimension. Ozuna had been in Atlanta for years. He had relationships. Cutting him loose mid-season over a rough stretch would send a message to the rest of the locker room about how the organization values veteran players when production dips.
In the end, the Braves chose to ride it out.
Atlanta’s Roster Pivot: The Moves They Made Instead
While Ozuna stayed on the roster through 2025, the Braves were quietly rebuilding the architecture around him.
They did release other veterans. Griffin Canning was cut. Ramón Laureano was let go. These were moves designed to create roster flexibility and reduce luxury tax exposure without disrupting the core of the lineup.
For the DH slot specifically, Atlanta began transitioning toward a rotation model. The idea was that instead of one expensive veteran carrying the entire DH workload, multiple players could share the position based on matchups and form.
Drake Baldwin and Dominic Smith emerged as candidates in that rotation. Mike Yastrzemski provided flexibility. The plan was to distribute at-bats rather than anchor the position to a single aging player on a declining contract.
By the time the season ended and Ozuna walked into free agency, Atlanta was already operating without him in their plans for 2026.
What Ozuna’s 2025 Statistics Actually Say
Let’s be fair and complete here. The hip injury was real and the decline was real. But Ozuna wasn’t worthless in 2025.
Twenty-one home runs is still meaningful production. There aren’t dozens of players you can count on for 20+ home runs every season. The .232 batting average and the .755 OPS tell you the efficiency dropped significantly — more strikeouts, fewer walks, less hard contact than in his peak years.
Advanced metrics showed that his barrel rate and exit velocity declined in the second half, consistent with the hip limiting his hip rotation and swing path. This wasn’t a player who stopped trying. The player’s body was working against him.
The question the Braves faced wasn’t whether Ozuna was good. It was whether the specific version of Ozuna in 2025 justified the specific cost and roster commitments they were making around him.
Their answer, revealed through action rather than statement, was: “We’ll let the contract expire and make a fresh decision.”
Pittsburgh: The New Chapter
In February 2026, Marcell Ozuna signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
One year. Twelve million dollars. A mutual option for 2027 that gives both sides flexibility depending on how the 2026 season plays out.
Pittsburgh is not a playoff contender on paper. The move is less about ring-chasing and more about a player who still has useful production in him, finding a team willing to pay for it, and a team that needs a veteran presence in their lineup while their younger players develop.
For Ozuna personally, it represents a fresh start. A new city, a new clubhouse, a chance to prove that 2025 was an injury-impacted outlier rather than the beginning of a permanent decline.
At 35 years old, he remains one of the more dangerous bats on a good day. A healthy hip — one full offseason to recover and rebuild — could produce a comeback season that makes the Pirates look smart and makes the Braves wonder if they should have pursued re-signing him.
Or it could be the beginning of the end of a major league career, as the injury issues continue to limit his effectiveness.
Baseball doesn’t answer those questions until the games are played.
What This Episode Reveals About Modern Roster Management
The Braves-Ozuna waiver candidate conversation is a perfect window into how modern front offices operate.
Nothing is sacred. Every contract gets evaluated. Each player’s output is evaluated in relation to their salary, roster place, and opportunity cost (i.e., who else may be occupying that space).
When teams fall out of playoff contention, the evaluation intensifies. Every day left on a veteran’s deal that isn’t contributing to a playoff run is money spent building toward nothing immediate.
The fact that Ozuna was discussed internally as a possible waiver candidate doesn’t mean the Braves were wrong about signing him. It means the organization was being professionally rigorous. You don’t manage a $200+ million payroll by being sentimental about aging contracts.
The fact that they ultimately kept him through the end of his deal doesn’t mean they were wrong to consider moving him. It means they weighed the costs and benefits — salary savings, clubhouse stability, available alternatives — and concluded that staying the course was the right call.
Final Words
The phrase “Braves Marcell Ozuna waiver candidate” took on a life of its own in 2025. It traveled through social media, landed in sports radio segments, and created a narrative that Ozuna was being shown the door.
The reality was more professional and less dramatic.
A team evaluating its options. A player managing a real injury. An expiring contract that both sides knew wasn’t going to be renewed. And a front office that chose roster continuity over a mid-season roster disruption that wouldn’t have changed much either way.
Ozuna is now a Pittsburgh Pirate. Atlanta is moving forward with a more flexible DH approach. Both outcomes are consistent with how smart organizations manage transitions.
The lesson here is worth holding onto. Waiver candidate speculation — like most roster rumors in baseball — represents someone’s analysis of what could happen. It says nothing guaranteed about what will happen. And the gap between those two things is where most of the noise in baseball media lives.
Ozuna wasn’t waived. He left on his own terms, through the natural expiration of a $64 million deal he largely delivered on. That’s not a failure. That’s just how a career chapter ends.
FAQs
Q1: Did the Atlanta Braves really put Marcell Ozuna on waivers?
No. Marcell Ozuna was never placed on waivers by the Atlanta Braves. He remained on their roster through the end of the 2025 season, his contract expired naturally, and he entered free agency.
Q2: What made Ozuna a “waiver candidate” in 2025?
The phrase originated in analyst media — notably Bleacher Report — as speculation about players who could potentially move at the August trade deadline. Ozuna’s declining production, hip injury, and expiring contract made him a logical subject for that kind of discussion, even though the actual move never happened.
Q3: How did Ozuna perform in 2025?
With a batting average of.232 and an OPS of roughly.755, he recorded 21 home runs. A persistent hip injury limited his second-half power production. His June–July stretch was particularly rough at a .181 batting average.
Q4: Why didn’t the Braves trade or waive Ozuna mid-season?
Multiple factors complicated a potential move: his no-trade clause, limited salary savings from a waiver release, the impact on clubhouse chemistry, and the reality that his remaining production — even diminished — was still useful in their lineup.
Q5: What team is Marcell Ozuna on in 2026?
The Pittsburgh Pirates. He signed a one-year, $12 million deal in February 2026 with a mutual option for the 2027 season.
Q6: What were Ozuna’s best seasons with the Braves?
His 2024 season stands out as his peak in Atlanta — 39 home runs and a fourth-place finish in NL MVP voting. His 2023 season was also productive. The combination of those seasons made 2025’s decline more noticeable.
Q7: What is a waiver candidate in MLB?
A waiver candidate is a player on a 40-man roster who is being considered for designation for assignment (DFA) or outright release. Once placed on waivers, other teams have 47 hours to claim the player and take on their remaining salary. If unclaimed, the team can trade or release the player.
Q8: How did Ozuna’s no-trade clause affect his situation?
His no-trade clause meant that no trade could happen without his approval, complicating any mid-season deal. This reduced the Braves’ options for moving him even if they had wanted to.
Q9: How is Atlanta replacing Ozuna at DH in 2026?
The Braves have moved toward a rotation model for the DH position, using Mike Yastrzemski, Dominic Smith, Drake Baldwin, and situational matchups rather than relying on a single primary designated hitter.
Q10: Did Ozuna’s original 2020 contract include any performance bonuses or protections?
The four-year, $64 million deal was structured at $16 million per year. Specific bonus or protection details aren’t fully public, but the contract was notable because it was signed shortly after Ozuna’s off-field legal issues in 2020.
Q11: Is Ozuna expected to bounce back in Pittsburgh?
A full offseason to recover from the hip issue gives him a legitimate chance at improved production in 2026. At 35, he’s entering the phase of his career where injury management becomes the primary determinant of whether a season is successful or not.
Q12: What was the biggest statistical drop from 2024 to 2025 for Ozuna?
Home runs dropped from 39 to 21. His OPS fell from a career-level high in 2024 to approximately .755 in 2025. The decline was most visible in his power numbers in the second half, consistent with a hip injury limiting his swing mechanics.
Q13: Could the Braves have signed Ozuna to a new deal for 2026?
Technically yes — he was a free agent after 2025. But Atlanta made clear through their offseason moves that they were moving in a different direction with the DH position. There were no reported negotiations between the Braves and Ozuna after the 2025 season ended.
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