Atlanta signs Jurickson Profar to three-year deal: Fantasy upside, potential risk on $42 million contract

It’s been a quiet offseason for Atlanta, but the 2024 NL East Champions made a splash Thursday evening.

Let’s take a look at what Profar adds to the Atlanta offense, and what kind of potential fantasy upside he brings in return.

How much success did Profar have in 2024?

Before we look at Profar’s 2024 season, it’s probably a good idea to bring up his previous campaigns. For those who don’t pay attention to prospect stuff, Profar was widely considered one of — if not the — best prospects in baseball while he was a member of the Rangers. While he did have a 20-homer, 10-steal season in his final year with Texas, it’s more than fair to say he didn’t come close to reaching his lofty potential and he was dealt to Oakland at the end of the 2018 season.

After a disappointing season with the A’s he was traded to San Diego, and he had five mostly non-descript seasons with the Padres outside of half a year with the Rockies before being released by Colorado and joining the Padres again at the end of 2023. He entered 2024 with a career OPS+ of 92, and seemed destined to just be a utility option for the remainder of his career.

But, then 2024 happened. Profar finished the campaign with a career-best slash — career-best seems like such an understatement — of .280/.380/.459 while bashing 24 homers and driving in 85 runs. He was named an All-Star for the first time, won his first Silver Slugger award and finished 14th in National League MVP voting while helping the Padres reach the postseason.

What did Profar do well in 2024 to reach those numbers?

The one thing Profar has shown throughout his career even when he wasn’t driving the baseball was an ability to make pitchers work. That was particularly true in 2024 with a walk rate of 11.4 percent that led to 76 free passes and put him in the 89th percentile of all qualified hitters. For many batters those kinds of walk totals lead to high strikeout totals, but that wasn’t the case for the switch-hitter at all. He struck out in just 15.1 percent of his plate appearances — good for an 88th percentile showing — and he was in the 90th percentile in whiff rate while missing on 17 percent of the swings he made last summer.

And there was plenty of hard contact on those swings, too. Profar was credited with a “hard hit” on 44.4 percent of his contact, and he had a well above-average average exit velocity of 91.1 mph. Those numbers helped him rank above the 90th percentile in both expected weighted on-base average and expected batting average.

Are there metrics that Profar struggled with in 2024? And if not, what are the concerns going forward?

Despite the 24 homers, Profar didn’t barrel the baseball very often last year with a below-average rate of 7.2 percent. The outfielder doesn’t possess elite bat speed, and that’s unlikely to get better as a player that turns 32 in February. He’s also not a burner on the bases by any stretch of the imagination, and the same concern for the bat speed applies to his wheels going forward.

Really, the biggest concern for Profar is simply that he hasn’t shown he can do this for more than one year. While he has always shown that strong approach and the ability to make contact, his hard-hit percentages and exit velocities are all numbers that rank far closer to the bottom of the league than the top. The prospect pedigree is nice, but the results outside of 2024 have made Profar essentially nothing more than depth for fantasy players?

Do you trust Profar to be this version in 2025?

The reasons to be skeptical of Profar are pretty obvious, and hopefully laid out in the above paragraphs. He’s provided real life value because of versatility and the willingness to get on via walk — it’s also worth noting that he led baseball with 18 hit-by-pitches as he crowds the plate like very few others do — but there’s a reason Profar hasn’t been a high draft selection since people were hoping his prospect pedigree would lead to big things.

But something appeared to click for Profar in 2024, and I do believe this is closer to the version that we’ll see going forward as a member of the Atlanta outfield. The fact that he’ll likely hit second with a chance to be driven in by some of the better bats in the National League — and also have a chance to drive in Ronald Acuna Jr. once he’s healthy — only add to the intrigue. He should have a chance to score plenty of runs even if the average takes a dip, and there’s enough power in his bat to suggest he’ll drive in a fair number himself even if the barrel rate doesn’t wow.

It’d be nice if he was more of a stolen-base threat, but when you consider how good he was in 2024 and how good this situation is for 2025, I would want Profar to be one of my starting outfielders this year. Maybe not as one of the top two options, but I’m not sure you could do much better for a third outfielder in standard redraft leagues regardless of scouting category. There’s obviously a considerably higher floor and ceiling for leagues that use on-base percentage and points leagues, as well. Either way, Jurickson Profar should be targeted in 2025.