Marcell Ozuna bet on himself. And though this offseason is expected to be anything but predictable, it sure seems like he'll win that bet.
Ozuna was among the big names on last offseason's free-agent market, and despite being a 29-year-old who had put up some eye-popping numbers in his career, those numbers were deemed mysterious enough that interest wasn't exactly through the roof. So he signed a one-year deal with the Atlanta Braves.
And then he almost won the Triple Crown.
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Ozuna went off in 2020, leading the National League with 18 home runs and 56 RBIs, his .338 batting average ranking third. He helped the Braves all the way to the NLCS and set himself up for a big multi-year payday this winter.
So is he the solution to the White Sox hole at DH?
Ozuna was an outfielder up until 2020, playing for the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals in the NL. But when the DH went universal for 2020, that's where Ozuna spent most of his time, seemingly plotting his future as a designated hitter. Ozuna's market — and those of other free agents like Nelson Cruz —will be complicated by the fact that the NL isn't certain to have the DH again in 2021. The league and the union will need to negotiate that, which is something they rarely do with ease or rapidity.
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The White Sox, of course, are guaranteed to have a DH. If they want to plug that hole with Ozuna, there's nothing stopping them from doing so. But Ozuna, Cruz and other free agents might wait, even with offers from AL teams, to see if they could have 15 more teams driving their salaries up.
Bringing in veteran sluggers to try and solve the DH spot hasn't gone well for the White Sox in each of the last two offseasons, the trade for Yonder Alonso and the free-agent signing of Edwin Encarnación not panning out in pretty significant fashions. Ozuna would certainly figure to be in a different class, even from that of the previously uber-consistent Encarnación, and is more of a long-term fix than a short-term stopgap.
Of course, the White Sox also claim a potential solve at DH with top ranked prospect Andrew Vaughn. While his pro experience is limited to 55 games at Class A and below in 2019 and a summer at the team's alternate training site, the White Sox think very highly of him and his bat. It's well within the realm of possibility that Vaughn could be the team's everyday DH for much of the 2021 season.
But as they showed by swapping Rick Renteria for Tony La Russa in the manager's chair, the White Sox, entering 2021 with championship expectations, are in the market for dependability. That's something Vaughn cannot provide at the moment.
If the White Sox identify DH as a spot where they crave a more reliable solution — remember, they have other areas of need, like starting pitching and right field, that could soak up offseason resources — then maybe the free-agent market and someone like Ozuna is the direction they go.