I think he might be a decent stopgap 3b for the Orioles, but his decline over the last few years, and esp. this year, has been disturbing. His power appears to have evaporated. I don't follow the rockies very closely...has he been hampered by a nagging injury?

This sounds like Morgan Ensberg disease.

I think he's a fine off-season 3b. Come April I'd be distressed to have him in uniform, but in December he's a treat.

has he been hampered by a nagging injury?

None that were reported. The rumor* is that he's lazy and out of shape, so his skills have eroded (*supposedly reported to bloggers by friends of scouts, that sort of thing). But he also has a little bit of JD Drew disease in that he looks like he doesn't give a damn, so I suspect it's easy for some to accept that laziness is at the root of his problems.

He must have some bounce back in him, but at this point his career OPS+ is only 102. If he rebounds to something like what ZiPS has (.335/.428), that looks a lot like his 2008, and he wasn't a very helpful player then, either.

This sounds like Morgan Ensberg disease.

I suspect this is a more succinct way of saying what I said above, but I didn't pay close attention to Ensberg.

Hey, it's another blogger that just signed up to BBTF to promote their bloggery! Kudos!

If I were the Phillies, I'd rather have Beltre than Atkins or DeRosa.

Should there be a thread for the arb deadline?

The Rockies offered arb to Jason Marquis, who is a type B. I guess they must be pretty sure he will get a decent FA offer, as he made $9.875 million last season and that could really stretch their budget were he to accept.

As expected, they also offered arb to Rafael Betancourt (type A).

I think he's a fine off-season 3b. Come April I'd be distressed to have him in uniform, but in December he's a treat.

Agreed.

His ISO and K/BB ratios haven't just slipped since 2006, they've both just crashed at an alarming rate.

I don't think any team's fans would be particularly upset with an NRI or minor league deal --

But the thing is, Atkins made 7 million last year. Anyone acquiring him prior to the non-tender deadline is going to be on the hook for a MINIMUM contract of about 5.6 million (I believe 20% is the biggest arb cut allowed?). That's a mighty expensive flier.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a minor bidding war erupt among bargain bin shoppers -- maybe a mil and half -- but any team that actively tries to acquire him before the Rox NT him is just being foolish.

A terrible article. 2 of his points are basically that Atkins has a lot of versatility when combined with DeRosa. Every possible FA has a lot of versatility when combined with DeRosa. If anything signing both Polanco or DeRosa and Atkins is even worse than just signing Atkins. If you sign either of those guys to go along with him it just leaves Atkins as a terrible bench player. He wouldn't even platoon for the Phillies with DeRosa or Polanco because both those guys are RHB too and there's no way the Phillies take Howard or Utley out against LHPs and if they happened to want to do that with Ibanez they would use Fransisco instead anyways.

I don't see how the Phillies can really do anything but sign one of the better 3B options out there or go back to Feliz. Beltre seems to make the most sense to me.

Atkins' career OPS away from Coors is 735 (252/324/411). Add in that he's not exactly Pie Traynor with the glove, and there's no reason to give him any more than a minor league deal.

For those who subscribe to Bill James on line, there is an article by James about Atkins (I think it was called, appropriately enough, "Garrett Atkins"), which was written last off-season. James looked at the rapid deterioration in Atkins' BB/K ratios, and attempted to find comparable players with similar declining BB/K career patterns. There weren't many, and an alarming number of the comparable players were out of baseball within two years. James didn't want to predict that Atkins would suffer a similar fate, but he concluded that there is cause for concern. He speculated that the cause could be physical (perhaps see an eye doctor) or that Atkins had changed his style in an attempt to become the Rockies' main RBI hitter. I recall the article because, at the time, I thought it was a fascinating study by James. Then, after Atkins hit so poorly in 2009, it didn't really surprise me.

Pass.

Atkins does squint noticeably at the plate, but I think he's always done that. Still, I hope they thought to give him an eye test.