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First, Collins pairs a strong walk rate with weakly-hit batted balls, and that’s a fragile skill set. Collins ranked in the bottom 20% of MLB hitters in barrel rate and expected slugging, and in the bottom half in exit velocity and hard-hit rate. He hit .263 and slugged .411 on batted balls expected to produce .247/.349. Parallel to that, he walked 13% of the time. Of the 34 MLB hitters who walked at least 12% of the time (min. 300 PA), Collins was 25th in SLG and 29th in isolated power. Collins’s swing decisions, as measured by SEAGER, were among the worst in the game -- 255th among 268 hitters with 300 PA, and only a handful of players took more hittable pitches. I, tongue in cheek, comped him to Lance Blankenship, but the more I look into his profile, the more it seems all walks and little else.
My other concern is that Collins was 27 as a rookie, and an old 27. He’ll turn 29 on July 22, 2026. There’s just not much runway for him to get better, and he’s going to an organization with no track record of making hitters better.
