Garrett Atkins plays third base for the Colorado Rockies. Atkins completed a three year decent from outstanding offense to replacement level in 2009. Since 2006, his OBP has dropped 100 points and his slugging percentage dropped 200 points. The really impressive thing is that he did this during the prime of his career. The peak of his career came at age 26. If you take his age 25-27 seasons combined you get a player with a .306/.376/.492 slash line, which is very good. Those number are highly influenced by Coors Field, but his road numbers were not bad.
What changed for him over the last two seasons are that his home numbers became more like his old road numbers and his road offense disappeared. I wonder if this is a case of a player who failed to adjust as opponents found his weaknesses because his home park hid just how much his opponents had figured him out.
He’s still young enough that he could recover. Maybe his demotion to part-time player will cause him to examine his decline and try to correct his weaknesses. Baseball is a game of adjustments, and Atkins doesn’t appear to have adjusted much in his career.
Posted by David Pinto at 8:31 pm | Players, Players A to Z | Permalink | No Comments
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