By ancient Braves Journal tradition, whenever we add a new player, particularly a reasonably prominent one, there’s a writeup to introduce him to the crowd. Ryan already wrote up the acquisition but I thought it was worth going into a bit more depth on the player.

We all know who he is, of course. The Rangers signed Jurickson Profar out of Curacao sixteen years ago, not too long after his sixteenth birthday; he’ll celebrate his 32nd in two weeks. He was highly precocious and got a cup of coffee in the majors when he was 19, by which time he was a top-ten prospect in baseball. He was the consensus overall top prospect in baseball going into the 2013 season – BA, BP, and MLB Pipeline all agreed on that – and his potential seemed limitless.

A brief comparison to Byron Buxton may be worthwhile; they were frequently compared at the time, as titanic talents whose promise was nearly undone by injury. Buxton was taken second overall in the 2012 draft and was the #1 prospect in baseball by 2014, a year Profar entirely missed due to injury. Buxton has now spent 10 seasons in the majors and has a total of 772 games played; he’s only cleared 100 games twice, including last year. He has essentially settled in as the Tyler Glasnow of position players, having produced more than 20 WAR in his career despite all his time missed.

Profar has spent 11 seasons in the majors now, and played 1119 games, but he’s only been worth around nine wins, nearly half of them last year. While Buxton’s injuries have not crushed his defensive performance, Profar has gone from a well-regarded shortstop prospect to a poor defensive corner outfielder.

But he remains a fine hitter. While last year’s performance was excellent, it was not the only instance of sustained fine play in his career. In general, while his defense is only acceptable by comparison with Marcell Ozuna or Jorge Soler, he’s been a hitter with pretty good power and very good plate discipline and contact rates.

In 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 he posted OPS+ over 100, and while last year he set a career high in homers with 24, he also hit 20 homers in back-to-back years in 2018 and 2019. For his career, he has a walk rate of 10%, a strikeout rate of 16%, and a contact rate of 83%. His Chase, Whiff, K%, and BB% numbers have all been deep-red on Baseball-Savant his entire career, even while last year’s exit velocity numbers seemed to come out of nowhere.

As I’ve noted in the comments, Alex Anthopoulos seems to have a history of betting on players who make extraordinarily hard contact (e.g. Jorge Soler, Marcell Ozuna, Josh Donaldson) as well as players who have exhibited a major recent improvement in their play (e.g., his extensions of Ozuna, plus Spencer Strider, Jose Bautista, and Edwin Encarnacion).

The contract values Profar as roughly a two-win player, which seems quite reasonable. But if Profar’s able to hang onto his improvement in his power numbers, he could be a bit better than that, defense notwithstanding. The Braves obviously benefit from their longstanding connection with Curacao; Profar clearly was excited to come here, and I hope that he and Ozzie Albies can help each other as they both work on remaking themselves as offensively focused players whose defense has been greatly weakened by injury.

This deal feels to me as having relatively moderate risk given the clear upside in Profar’s bat, and it addresses one of the team’s core weaknesses. At this point, Jarred Kelenic is the team’s fourth outfielder, and when Ronald Acuña returns, Kelenic will probably become Profar’s defensive caddy. Perhaps Profar can help Kelenic, too, as another former top prospect who struggled for years to live up to his potential.

The team isn’t perfect and I hope that Anthopoulos isn’t finished. But this was a great deal.