Cardinals Secret Weapon: Marcell Ozuna

Many might look at the moves that the St. Louis Cardinals have made this winter and automatically assume that what they have done is not nearly enough. After all, they still have a gapping hole in the closer role and could use another bat, but their moves this winter have been far from disappointing when you dig a little deeper.

St. Louis started the winter by trading Aledmys Diaz to Toronto, in order to allow Paul DeJong to play shortstop on an everyday basis, traded four prospects to the Marlins for outfielder, Marcell Ozuna, and signed free agent right-handed reliever, Luke Gregerson. In addition, St. Louis traded outfielder, Stephen Piscotty, to the Oakland Athletics to be closer to his Mom who is dealing with ALS and a little over two weeks ago shipped outfielder, Randall Grichuk, to the Blue Jays in exchange of two right-handed pitchers in Dominic Leone and Connor Greene.

Sure, those moves aren't the sexiest moves made all winter, but the one that has really gone under-the-radar is the trade for outfielder, Marcell Ozuna. Going into the winter, St. Louis had three primary goals: solidify their outfield, find another bat or two to make their lineup more impactful, and find more help at the back of their bullpen. With the Ozuna move, they definitely hit a home run with the 2 of those 3 goals.

Dating back to 2013, when Marcell Ozuna made his MLB debut, Ozuna played a significant part of the tremendous outfield trio that the Marlins had in him, Christian Yelich, and Giancarlo Stanton. In fact, you could make the argument that over that span, Miami had the best outfield in the league because all three could play their outfield positions on an everyday basis and each one hit above average. From a league wide perspective, Ozuna not only provided that worth to the Marlins, but did it at a very high level.

To measure the worth of Marcell Ozuna, let's first take a look at his cumulative WAR over the past five seasons. Over that span, Ozuna is tied 22nd among outfielders with a 14.2 WAR. He is tied at that spot with Hunter Pence of the San Francisco Giants, Alex Gordon of the Kansas City Royals, and Dexter Fowler from Ozuna's new team, the St. Louis Cardinals. That's pretty good company considering that Fowler has long been respected around the game and Alex Gordon has easily been one of the top left fielders over that span despite having a down year last season.

Furthermore, Marcell Ozuna knows how to hit based on how many RBI he has scored over the last five seasons. According to FanGraphs, Ozuna ranks 15th among outfielders with 361 RBI over 2,684 plate appearances. Furthermore, Ozuna has a .329 on-base percentage and a .457 slugging percentage during that time as well.

In addition to those statistics, let's take a look at how Ozuna does from a fielding perspective. Over the past five seasons, Ozuna has a 10.1 Def rating which ranks 23rd among outfielders. Def takes into account how well a player can field funs, while also considering their positional adjustment on every play they make.

Beyond that, Ozuna has also been tremendous from a Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) perspective over the past five seasons. In those five seasons, Ozuna has raked up a DRS rating of 15, which puts him 17th among outfielders and has a Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) of 14.9, good for 17th best among outfielders, over that period of time. UZR is a great measure of how well an outfielder performs because it looks at the play that actually happened and strives to compare it to how the average outfielder made that exact same play.

All in all, to say that Marcell Ozuna is just another outfield addition for the St. Louis Cardinals, would be a huge understatement and a disrespectful statement nonetheless to the skill set that Ozuna brings to the outfield on an everyday basis. Sure, Ozuna isn't Bryce Harper or Mike Trout, but he is still an incredible outfielder and will only continue to get better since he is at the beginning of his peak at 27 years old.

Considering that the Cardinals made it a priority to find another offensive weapon and upgrade their outfield, St. Louis hit a home run by acquiring Marcell Ozuna and surrendering four prospects, two of whom still have yet to prove themselves at the major league level and two others that could still turn out to be duds. While the Cardinals didn't get Josh Donaldson or Manny Machado, like many fans hoped they would, they still did extremely well and the best part is Ozuna still has three years left on his contract before he hits free agency.

Who knows, Ozuna might make such an impact, that the Cardinals decide to extend him past that season and reap even more benefits from an already outstanding trade.