In a season where so many things went wrong for the Atlanta Braves, there may not have been a more pleasant and unexpected surprise on the offensive side of the ball than Ramon Laureano. It’s probably not hyperbole to say the club would not have made the postseason without his services at the plate, and that says a lot about a player whose career had cratered after a PED suspension and was flat-out released prior to joining the team in May.
How acquired
Days after losing Ronald Acuña Jr. to a torn ACL, the Braves signed Laureano to a minor league deal following his unceremonious release from Cleveland. He spent two weeks in Gwinnett and absolutely crushed the ball with an OPS upwards of 1.000 before getting the call to Atlanta.
What were the expectations?
The expectations were fairly low, as Laureano hit a paltry .143/.265/.229 with the Guardians while striking out 39 percent of the time. Still, the 30-year-old outfielder was once a darn good hitter with Oakland (119 wRC+ prior to suspension) and was worth buying a lottery ticket on. Acuña was set to miss the rest of the season, the Trade Deadline was two months and 60 games away, and the corner outfielders on the 40-man roster were hardly inspiring any confidence with their play.
More broadly, with or without the context that Laureano had struggled so badly with the Guardians that he got cut, his PED suspension made it hard to figure out exactly what kind of player he was going to be going forward. He had never posted an xwOBA below .335 before the suspension, but when he returned for 383 PAs in 2022, it sank to .307, a number he then repeated in another 404 PAs the following year. His post-suspension performance was so consistent, and so starkly different, that it seemed like “light-hitting outfielder with defensive update” was Laureano’s new description, contrary to his prior, potentially PED-aided “good hitter, good defender, 4 WAR/600 outfielder” persona.