If you thought the Philadelphia Phillies have been having a quiet offseason, the Atlanta Braves have been downright catatonic. At least they were, up until Thursday when the NL East rival finally made a splash on the free agent market by signing outfielder Jurickson Profar to a three-year, $42 million deal, per MLB.com's Theo DeRosa and Mark Bowman.
With the addition of the 2024 All-Star, the Atlanta outfield, an area in which the Braves already had a significant edge over the Phillies, is now leaps and bounds ahead. The Phillies are banking on their new left fielder, Max Kepler, bouncing back from a rough, injury-riddled 2024. But even if he does, the Philadelphia outfield, easily the team's biggest weakness, pales in comparison to the Braves.
And it's not particularly close.
Jurickson Profar signing gives Braves' outfield even bigger advantage over Phillies
Profar will share the Truist Park outfield grass with Ronald Acuña Jr. and Michael Harris II, a dynamic starting trio. Even with the former NL MVP Acuña due to miss up to six weeks at the beginning of the season, preseason projections show a huge disparity between those three and the Phillies' presumed starting trio of Kepler, Brandon Marsh and Nick Castellanos.
Steamer projections on FanGraphs predict the Braves' three outfielders to combine for 11.9 fWAR. The Phillies starting three is projected to compile 3.2 fWAR. Even if you include Johan Rojas as a fourth, part-time center fielder, the Phillies still come up short with 4.0 fWAR. It wasn't even close to begin with, with Acuña and Harris combining for a projected 10 fWAR.
Profar, who was at one time a No. 1 prospect, finally figured it out last season after failing to live up to the hype for more than a decade. He compiled 4.3 fWAR in 2024 after putting up 4.9 fWAR in his first 10 seasons combined. The 31-year-old hit .280 with an .839 OPS, 24 home runs, 85 RBI and 94 runs scored for the San Diego Padres.
Steamer projects Profar to collect 1.9 fWAR, a total dragged down by his long history of previous MLB production, no doubt. Even so, that's still higher than any of the Phillies' outfielders — Marsh's 1.8 projected fWAR is the closest.
Say what you will about a flash in the pan, but there's reason to believe Profar can sustain the newfound production after he got help from Fernando Tatis Jr. and Tatis Sr. to turn his hitting around last year (subscription required), according to The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal.
The Braves, at least, believe it, and it looks like trouble for the Phillies in 2025.