Analyzing Atkins

All throughout the baseball offseason, rumors circulate regarding potentially new stomping grounds for several players. Some of these players help rumors come to fruition while others stay put amidst the speculation. The most recent player seemingly linked to a new team each and every is Garrett Atkins of the Colorado Rockies. Atkins, 29, has been their everyday third baseman for the last four seasons and would serve as an upgrade for several teams. The extent to which he would upgrade a new team may surprise, however.

In 2006, Garrett had an incredible season with the stick, hitting .329/.409/.556 with 29 home runs. His .410 wOBA led to +47 batting runs. Even with his -7 runs defense, after adjustments for value above replacement level and playing third base, Atkins was a +6 WAR player. +6 wins! In that same season, Matt Holliday posted a .973 OPS with 34 home runs, and was a +5.3 win player. Unfortunately, Atkins would not even come close to repeating that production the next season.

In 2007, Atkins hit .301/.367/.486, with 25 home runs and a .368 wOBA. The dropoff in his numbers led to his offense being worth +21 runs. Defensively, he stunk the field up, costing the team -20 runs at the hot corner. All told, Atkins went from +6 wins to +2 wins, essentially the equivalent of a league average player. The 2008 season did not get any better.

This past season, Atkins’ numbers declined even more, as he hit .286/.328/.452, with 21 home runs and a .337 wOBA. Atkins saw his wOBA drop 42 points from ’06 to ’07, and another 31 points from ’07 to ’08. His offense was worth just +5 runs. Garrett’s defense “improved” to his 2006 form, costing his team just -7 runs as opposed to the atrocious figure in 2007. Put together, his 2008 campaign was worth about +1.8 wins, slightly below average.

Marcel forecasts Atkins as a .357 wOBA hitter next season, which would signal an improvement of 20 points from this past season. This would result in +13 runs offensively. If we consider his defense to be about -9 runs, then Atkins would be a +2.4 win player next season. There are several teams on which a +2.4 win player would serve as an upgrade, but it is not as if these teams are acquiring a top-notch power hitter. His 2007 and 2008 seasons have shown that this is more likely his true talent level.

A few concrete reasons exist for his offensive decline: O-Swing%, Contact Rate, BB%, and K%. Atkins’ O-Swing, which measures the frequency of pitches out of the zone at which he swung, has risen from 14.1% in 2005 to 19.1% in 2008. Adversely, his overall rate of contact has decreased from 88.5% in 2005 to 85.7% in 2008. And, over the last three seasons, in which he played a minimum of 155 games, his raw walks have decreased from 79 to 40 while raw strikeouts have increased from 76 to 100.

Atkins might be a nice fit for a non-Colorado team, given his projected above average worth as well as his being under control for a bit longer, but he is not the same player he was in 2006… at all.