Archive for Chipper Jones

Chipper Jones announced in March that he would retire at the season’s end. He cited various reasons for ending his hall-of-fame career and admitted that he was tired of living the baseball lifestyle. Always one to answer questions honestly in an era of generalities, he said that his decision was firm; no matter what, he was done once the Braves’ season ended.

As expected, his steadfastness to that decision has been tested, and reporters frequently ask whether he’s changed his mind. Maybe there’s a point to those questions. After all, Jones has a .379 wOBA and 2.9 WAR right now. And he’s on pace for his best season in four years. He projects to finish the season with a .372 wOBA and 4 WAR, and players don’t generally retire after posting numbers like that.

So where does his final season rank among career-concluding seasons throughout history. Is he truly going out on top?

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The 2008 season is officially in the books, capping my first full season covering baseball everyday. What a season it was, as well, with all sorts of events and storylines making for one extremely entertaining seven months. With that in mind, all of us here at Fangraphs are going to discuss some of our favorite moments of this past season. For me, one of the best parts of this season occurred in the early stages, and it involved following Chipper Jones and his quest for a .400+ batting average.

Nobody has posted a batting average of .400+ since 1941, when Ted Williams hit .406. Granted, batting averageis a relatively meaningless stat from a pure evaluative standpoint, but the idea of someone posting one of .400 or higher resonates in the minds of fans whenever somebody comes close. Rod Carew hit .388 in 1977; George Brett hit .390 in 1980; Tony Gwynn hit .394 in 1994; but nobody was able to reach Williams’ mark of .406 since then.

Through 20 games, Chipper Jones had 34 hits in 79 at bats, en route to a .430/.466/.709 line. After 40 games, he was 64-156, for a .410/.475/.679 line. And after 60 games, which took us past the halfway point of June, Chipper had recorded 93 hits in 222 at bats, producing a line of .419/.504/.676. From June 12 to July 9, Jones struggled, going 15-66, for a .227/.370/.424 line, ultimately ending his quest for the gaudy .400 batting average.

Overall, he finished with a slash line of .364/.470/.574, still fantastic numbers. With a batting average of .364, he fell just shy of Mickey Mantle’s .365 batting average record for a switch-hitter in a single season. Chipper won the batting title in the senior circuit, becoming the first switch-hitter to do so since 1991, when fellow Brave Terry Pendleton led the league. Chipper finished strong as well, hitting .408/.561/.612 in September to close out the season. And in medium leverage situations, Chipper did hit .408, so he managed to surpass .400 in one aspect of the season, but regardless, his quest for .400 well into June is my third highlight of the 2008 season.

Coming into play yesterday Braves third baseman Chipper Jones sported a .418/.495/.674 slash line, thanks in large part to his 77 hits in 184 at bats. In an 8-1 win over Milwaukee last night, Jones went 2-4 with two walks, raising his numbers to .420/.500/.670. Make no mistake: Chipper is playing out of his mind right now and doing much of the gruntwork in preventing the Braves from getting off to a terrible start. However, he is not the only player in recent history to get off to such a torrid start.

Trent McCotter, in a Retrolist message, passed along the following five instances of a player starting his season 77-184, or better:

Andres Galarraga, 1993: 80-184, .435/.462/.701, 1.163 OPS
Rod Carew, 1983: 79-184, .427/.473/.535, 1.008 OPS
Lenny Dykstra, 1990: 77-184, .418/.486/.546, 1.032 OPS
Paul O’Neill, 1994: 77-184, .418/.511/.703, 1.214 OPS
Todd Helton, 2000: 77-184, .418/.511/.815, 1.326 OPS

Pretty impressive stuff. Trent also acknowledged that this did not take into account years when a good amount of play by play files are missing so there may be others not mentioned here.

Curious about what happened from here I looked at the overall numbers of these players as well as what happened from their 185th at bat on. Here are their numbers starting with at bat #185 (their season totals in parentheses):

Andres Galarraga: 94-286, .329/.366/.538 (.370/.403/.602)
Rod Carew: 81-287, .282/.370/.331 (.339/.409/.411)
Lenny Dykstra: 115-406, .283/.386/.390 (.325/.418/.441)
Paul O’Neill: 54-188, .295/.408/.503 (.359/.460/.603)
Todd Helton: 139-396, .351/.440/.644 (.372/.463/.698)

While all five posted OPS counts over 1.000 during their 77-184 “streak” just Helton kept it up during his post-hot start plate appearances. On average, these five guys posted a .310 BA onwards from their scorching start. If Chipper were to hit .310 for the rest of the season, assuming his total number of at bats will be in the same range as the last few years, he would go 97 for his next 312, putting him at 174-496 to finish the season; that would be a .351 batting average.

Realistically, and with regards to this small group, Chipper has two options:

a) sustain a BA higher than .351 from last night to the end of the season, giving him the highest BA of the group (Helton hit .351 for the rest of his season after starting out .418, giving him a .372 for the season)
b) begin to regress, finishing the season with a tremendous slash line albeit not nearly as impressive as .418/.495/.674.

It is not very likely Chipper will finish the year with a BA over or around .400 based either on this evidence or our own intuition; however that does not, in any way, make what he is currently doing any less remarkable. We all tend to understand how difficult it is to sustain a .400+ batting average primarily because nobody has done so in recent years and Chipper is at the point of difficulty right now where a 2-5 night actually decreases the average.

Still, a large part of me is hoping he can somehow pull it off as it would be great for baseball.