Profar, so good?
Atlanta takes a medium-sized gamble on one of 2024's biggest turnaround stories.
It’s pretty hard to get a 1,400 percent pay raise over the course of eleven months. If you’re set on it, I suggest getting way better at every critical aspect of your job extremely quickly.
Just ask Jurickson Profar. Last February, he signed a one-year, $1 million deal with the Padres. He was coming off a horrendous 2023 campaign in which he posted -1.6 fWAR and got cut loose by the famously rudderless Colorado Rockies. “Bat-only player couldn’t even hit in Coors” is a pretty damning summary for a player’s age-30 season.
Profar latched onto the Padres at the end of 2023, and when he agreed to come back at a bargain rate for 2024, it was to play a utility role. The Padres’ press release described him as an “infielder/outfielder” - never mind that he had played one inning in the infield since 2021. Profar was a streaky bat whose best seasons were 2- to 3-WAR campaigns but who was just as good a bet to be a total nonfactor in any given year. San Diego, where he’d put up a career-best campaign in 2022, seemed more likely to be the final resting place for his career than a launching pad for a multi-year contract. Stick him in the mix, let him mentor the youngsters in what figures to be a step back from championship contention, and see what happens.
Now, Profar is the recipient of a 3 year, $42 million deal. Let’s talk about how it happened and what might be next for Profar and the Braves.
What the Braves are getting in Profar
It’s not that uncommon for a player to have a mirage star-caliber season - one where the ball bounces his way enough that he looks a lot more valuable than he actually is. In 2018, Johan Camargo had a .307 xwOBA but a .346 wOBA, resulting in a campaign in which he compiled 3.2 of the 4.0 fWAR he’s accumulated in his career. In 2021, Nicky Lopez put up a superstar-caliber 5.5-fWAR campaign by putting up a .283 xwOBA but a .329 wOBA. These were bad hitters (in Lopez’s case, a terrible hitter) masquerading as good ones for a year.
The 4.3 fWAR Profar accumulated in 2024 is by far a career high. But the similarities with Camargo and Lopez end there. Take a look:
Profar got better at everything in 2024 - and I mean better in the ways that matter. He hit the ball way harder, he kept up his excellent strikeout and walk numbers, and he even improved his pitch selection (for which the difference between a player’s zone-swing rate and chase rate is a rough heuristic). People much smarter than me, like Jarrett Seidler of Baseball Prospectus, have bought in.
Projection systems are understandably hesitant to anoint Profar a star. Steamer appears to be the boldest so far, putting Profar at 1.9 fWAR and a 113 wRC+, which, for reference, is extremely similar to the campaigns that Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Randy Arozarena, and Bryan Reynolds put together in 2024. If Profar’s changes in 2024 are real, these projections will look light.
As for what the underlying changes are, I’m not qualified to say. In his media availability on Thursday evening, Alex Anthopoulos said the Braves believed in the significant swing changes that Jurickson Profar made last offseason with the help of Fernando Tatis Sr. But as Mike Petriello notes, this isn’t the first time Profar has made significant swing changes with the help of Fernando Tatis Sr. Maybe the leg kick and the opened-up stance have made the difference. Maybe Profar was healed by the power of Mike Shildt. It’s hard to say, and I’m guessing if more teams were confident that a 31-year-old former top prospect had truly put it all together, Profar would be looking at a significantly larger deal. This is a gamble, but a fun one. And even if Profar performs to his sober projections, the team would happily take a player in the Gurriel/Arozarena/Reynolds tier at a position that’s been a sore spot for a while.
What’s next
The outfield is pretty well set at this point. When everyone’s healthy, it’ll be Profar in left, Michael Harris II in center, and Ronald Acuña Jr. in right. While Acuña is out to start the year, Anthopoulos said that he expects Jarred Kelenic and Bryan de la Cruz to battle for right field. I think the median outcome here is that Kelenic and de la Cruz platoon; for as awful as he was overall in 2024, de la Cruz was relatively good against lefties. Both players have options, but given Kelenic’s ability to moonlight in center and left-handed bat, I’m guessing de la Cruz is the one to get shuttled to Gwinnett upon Acuña’s return.
How about the rest of the roster? Hours before the Braves signed Profar, Mark Bowman reported that he was told the Braves had approximately $33 million to spend this offseason. Assuming that number is correct, the $12 million the Braves will allot in 2025 to Profar leaves them with $21 million. There are three remaining spots where I could see the Braves spend that money: shortstop, the rotation, and the bullpen.
At shortstop, I’ve reached the conclusion that the only plausible upgrade is Ha-seong Kim. There are a couple of big obstacles to a Kim-Braves union: he’s represented by Scott Boras and he’s missing an indeterminate amount of time to start the season while rehabilitating from shoulder surgery. When healthy, Kim is a 4-win player at a position where the Braves have started a utility player the last few years. Unfortunately, between the injury, the contract structure he’ll likely demand (a high-AAV two- or three-year deal with multiple player opt-outs), and the fact that some team would probably be happy to pay him well to play second base (Yankees? Giants?), I’m pessimistic it happens.
In the rotation, Anthopoulos made clear during the Profar media availability that the Braves would only be interested in acquiring a pitcher who, in their view, would be good enough to justify not letting both Grant Holmes and Ian Anderson potentially grab Opening Day rotation spots. Holmes and Anderson are out of options, and while Holmes would do just fine in the bullpen in the Michael Tonkin/Jesse Chavez long man role, Anderson’s probably either in the rotation or out of the organization. If we take Anthopoulos at his word, I think we can rule out acquiring a pure innings-eater like José Quintana. The qualifying offer penalty probably makes Nick Pivetta too painful to add, and while Jack Flaherty has some Profar-like narrative as a pedigreed player who broke out of a mediocre stretch with an excellent performance on a prove-it deal in 2024, he has significant injury concerns and faded down the stretch. The Braves covet Dylan Cease - they were clearly involved in his market last offseason, and Anthopoulos said as much - and since the Padres are looking to clear salary, it’ll likely be a question of whether the Braves are willing to give up the prospect capital for what would likely be a one-year rental. My personal pick is Max Scherzer, who could probably be had for about the $15 million Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton took this winter, and who is probably the most trustworthy of that group on a per-inning basis.
As for the bullpen, there are plenty of veterans who’d probably be gettable for a one-year deal at $10 million or less, including Kenley Jansen, David Robertson, Joe Kelly, and, uh, Craig Kimbrel. To me, this is an area of lower urgency than the rotation; good relievers just appear out of thin air sometimes (see Tyler Matzek in 2020, Dylan Lee in 2022, or Grant Holmes last year) and while the Braves losing A.J. Minter and Joe Jiménez’s production stinks, they’ve got plenty of resources committed to the bullpen between Raisel Iglesias, Pierce Johnson, and Aaron Bummer. I’d guess the team takes a flyer on whichever veteran pitcher is most eager to sign before pitchers and catchers report. Add that pitcher to the battle between Daysbel Hernández, Angel Perdomo (whom I’ve talked about before), Rule 5 pick Anderson Pilar, and the various veteran arms the Braves have already brought in on non-guaranteed deals (Enoli Paredes and Enyel de los Santos are the most famous names), and there’s a healthy competition going.
The bottom line
Profar’s deal is the second-biggest free agent contract Anthopoulos has given any player since coming to Atlanta, eclipsed only by Marcell Ozuna’s second contract with the team. That speaks both to Anthopoulos’ general skepticism towards long-term free agent deals and the organization’s belief in Profar. Make no mistake - there’s real risk associated with this contract. The $14 million AAV Profar is owed will seem like a pittance if he replicates his 2024 and a fair bargain if he’s the 2-win player the projection systems see him as, but a bit of an anchor (akin to the Marcell Ozuna deal until May 2023) if he reverts to pre-2024 career norms.
Overall, in a market where players have largely done better than the public projections of their deals, Profar’s contract seems extremely fair; it comes in just below the 3 years and $45 million projected by FanGraphs and ESPN. And since the Padres didn’t tender Profar a qualifying offer, all the deal costs the Braves is money. After years of filling the position with veteran stopgaps (Nick Markakis, Adam Duvall) and upside projects (Jarred Kelenic), Profar represents the strongest odds of anyone in the Anthopoulos era to be a mid-term fixture in left field.
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