3 Braves on thin ice with team’s cold start to August

2. Marcell Ozuna has cooled off quite a bit from his bounce-back May and June

It’s been a season of extremes for Marcell Ozuna. The much-maligned outfielder/DH (with a heavy emphasis on the latter) started off the year abysmally, hitting .091 with a .425 OPS in April and seemingly looking like a player who had no business being at the plate in the major leagues.

Things turned around dramatically over the course of May and June, however, as he accrued an OPS around .950 over those two months while racking up 14 home runs, six doubles and 35 RBI. Who knows what exactly changed, but he looked like the player that the Braves and their fans thought they were getting when they inked him to a lucrative four-year contract a few years ago.

Admittedly, it’s not been as bad as April was for Ozuna, but he hasn’t come close to matching what he did over May and June as of late. Over eight games in August, Ozuna is slashing just .214/.313/.321 with a single home run as his only extra-base hit and while only driving in two runs and striking out 11 times.

Perhaps the new norm for Ozuna is this level of extreme swings where he’s either super-hot or super-cold with very little in-between that we see at the plate. If the lineup around him can stay swinging big bats, that actually might not be too problematic, especially if he can get into the groove at the right times — the playoffs would be nice.

In the context of the Braves’ struggles and cold start to August, though, his lack of production has definitely been a part of that.