Posts tagged ChipperJones at FanHouse

After playing a significant role in 11 of the Braves' 14 consecutive division titles, Chipper Jones knows a thing or two about how to act while playing the role of the front-runner, and he's not impressed with those who have followed in his footsteps. From a recent interview with Sporting News:

We won for 14 consecutive years, and you never, ever saw any bulletin board material. And now that these two teams are on top of the division, they can't keep their mouths shut. Just go play baseball. It's Cole Hamels now. It was Jimmy Rollins and Carlos Beltran the past couple of springs. These two teams are constantly going at each other verbally. You know, win with class, lose with class. Just keep your mouth shut and go play your game.

Hamels? Check. Rollins? Check. Beltran? Check. But wait, don't forget John Maine and Billy Wagner!

I think part of the reason the Phillies/Mets rivalry is more fierce is pure geography: New York and Philadelphia are a scant 100 miles apart; the Braves, meanwhile, are 10 full hours in the car away from their nearest division rival. Plus, the Phillies and Mets have shared the top two spots in the NL East for the last few years, whereas the Braves had an ever-changing cast of challengers in that second spot.

In any case, you have to enjoy the irony: a guy talking trash about other guys talking too much trash -- it's a Dugout plot just begging to be written.

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2009.

It's pretty obvious to any Braves fan that Frank Wren has to do some major retooling this offseason. Atlanta has never been a win-now-at-any-cost type of team, and they shouldn't suddenly become one; but the Braves have a loaded farm system and no major league pitching.

And frankly, there's only so long that you can allow prospects to develop without actually using them to make your team at the big league level better (that's not to say that trading blue chipper Tommy Hanson is acceptable; it's not). But the Braves, by virtue of the Peavy rumor train that's rolled through MLB gossip circles over the past few weeks, are one of the biggest teams to watch over the next few weeks: a new GM gets his chance to make a mark on a team with the chance to return to glory by pulling off a trade with his West Coast counterpart and fitting the pieces to make the Braves stop stinking up the NL East in embarrassingly anti-historical fashion.

This is interesting (and completely random), but Hank Aaron is upset that Bobby Cox likes to take all the credit for drafting Chipper Jones with the first overall pick in 1990. How upset? So much so that he apparently called Terence Moore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution out the blue to set the record straight:

"I was listening to something [last week] on television where Bobby was talking about how, when Chipper came to the team, he took him aside to tell him what we did to get him here, and I was stunned, really," said Aaron, before recalling a conversation he had with Braves officials in 1990 when they owned the No. 1 pick before that June draft. By the time of the draft, Aaron had been promoted to senior vice president.

Said Aaron, with a sigh, "I told Bobby. I told them all, and I told them, 'Y'all better go and get Chipper Jones.' "

At the time, Cox served as GM in addition to manager, and Aaron served as farm director before being promoted to senior vice president. As Aaron tells it, Cox was dead set on taking Todd Van Poppel until Aaron spoke with Van Poppel's father and discovered he'd be difficult to sign.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Six games were postponed last night due to weather. The Cubs and the Astros, as you know, are postponed today and tomorrow due to Hurricane Ike. Another storm system, which stretched all the way from the east coast to Mid-America, caused the postponement of no less than five games. This sets up a scenario in which there are six doubleheaders that will be played today, and 20 games in total. Sunday doubleheaders used to be more commonplace in an era without win shares, maple bats, or Matt Stairs. But six in one day at this moment is enough to induce baseball coma. It's like fastballs with trails of tryptophan, baby! So enjoy, and feel free to unbutton that top button.

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

It took me roughly six hours to formulate any sort of attack plan for this column. And that would be embarrassing if the column wasn't about the very thing that was really screwing my head around backwards: John Smoltz's comments to Jay Busbee.

"I say this for the first time, without reservation, if I'm going to bust my butt and if I feel like I'm good enough and it doesn't work out here, I will be pitching somewhere else ... My dream scenario would be to pitch in the playoffs again, and that's coming from a guy who's been in 13 of them. (Smoltz missed the 2000 playoffs with Tommy John surgery.) To me, that's what I'm about. So if the door gets closed here, it'll have to be explored somewhere else."

This is a terrifying statement for any fan of baseball and particularly for any lifelong Braves fan who places Smoltz as his favorite ballplayer ever. In fairness to Smoltz, of course, he didn't know the interview was going in Atlanta Magazine (not sure how that actually matters) and he did point out that the ideal situation was to finish his career with the Braves.

From The Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

Though it shouldn't be, as Brinson told us yesterday, the NL Cy Young race is likely a closed deal as things currently stand -- unless Brandon Webb keeps laying eggs. The Rookie of the Year race won't even be a contest with Geovany Soto running away with it. The MVP, however, is wide open.

In order to make sure we leave no stone unturned, let's examine the criteria. First of all, there are two predominant methods taken when people want to argue about MVP.

1. Bloggy/Spreadsheet Guy Who Never Played Baseball Method: Look at VORP. Whoever has the highest VORP should be the MVP, because the game of baseball isn't played on a field with human beings. It's played on a computer spreadsheet with robots that don't feel emotion or pressure.

2. Old, Stubborn Writer Guy Method: Check out the Triple Crown numbers for the everyday players on contending teams. If you have a 1.500 OPS and 200 steals and play Andruw Jones (circa 2003) defense on a last place team, you just don't count. You can't possibly be valuable to a team unless said team is good.

When the Braves learned they'd have to put Tim Hudson and Chipper Jones on the disabled list, it pretty much put an end to any hopes of winning the NL East this season, so they went ahead and traded Mark Teixeira to the Angels to make sure of it. Little did they know at the time that they would already be behind in the 2009 season as well.

That's because Tim Hudson has finally given in to reality and knows he has to undergo Tommy John surgery, which of course will end his season.

The veteran will have the surgery late next week. Dr. James Andrews will do the procedure, and Hudson faces a 12-month rehabilitation period.

"I just needed to convince myself," said Hudson, who on Wednesday was advised by two orthopedists - Andrews and Dr. Xavier Duralde - to have the surgery. "I needed to throw one more time, to convince myself of what needed to be done."

If there's any good news for Hudson, and there isn't much, it's that he's got plenty of teammates who have already had Tommy John surgery so they'll be able to prepare him for what he's going to go through. Of course, the bad news is that 12-month rehabilitation period.

Maybe the Braves can call the Angels and see if they want Casey Kotchman back in exchange for a starting pitcher.

It has been a long, long season for the Atlanta Braves. What started as a legitimate World Series campaign has suddenly become an injury riddled nightmare for first year GM Frank Wren.

Yet, he refused to give up on the season and trade the team's biggest soon-to-be free agent asset, Mark Teixeira. Until now.

On Monday afternoon, the Braves officially glued a ribbon on Teixeira's head and stationed him in their main display window. After gathering their chief decision-makers in Atlanta for a meeting Monday, they then began the process of informing other teams that they plan to trade Teixeira if they get the right deal.

The feeling of clubs that have spoken with Braves GM Frank Wren is that he hasn't seen anything lately that would convince him his team has a 41-17 run in it (which is what it would take to get to 90 wins). And neither has anyone else.

Wren followed his team to Philadelphia over the weekend, to try to get "a feel" for which way it was headed, he said. What he witnessed was almost incomprehensible -- a weekend in which the Braves blew leads of five-plus runs to the same team in back-to-back games for the first time in franchise history.

Well, it was a decent run for the Braves this year. I mean, not actually "decent" but they at the very least hung in there given the nature of all the injuries they have sustained. And, it has to seem pretty obvious that the injuries to Chipper Jones and Tim Hudson are the final straw for the season.

I am reasonably convinced that every single member of the 2008 Atlanta Braves roster has been heavily injured at some point this season. It might not be true -- in fact, it's definitely not true -- but it sure feels that way, doesn't it?

The Braves added two more to the notches to the belt Monday, too, as Tim Hudson and Chipper Jones both headed to the disabled list for at least two weeks (oh yeah and Jo-Jo Reyes headed to AAA too). Chipper summed up things pretty well:

"It's been that kind of year," Jones said. "We can't sustain the injuries we've sustained to key people and expect to stay competitive, at or near the top of the division. It's impossible, especially when you're replacing guys like myself, Smoltz, Glavine, [Rafael] Soriano and [Peter] Moylan with minor-league guys."

Yup. That says it pretty well. And it's pretty obvious that all three moves are kind of a "sigh" move towards 2008. The Mets and Phils are both reasonably surging, the Marlins are still alive and frankly, the Braves don't have a ton to play for unless you're really big on false hope.

In other words, it's probably about time to kick up the firesale that hasn't been happening at all a notch or two.

Fan are stupid, at least in terms of the mob mentality of finding blame. It's very easy when things are going wrong to look for someone to blame. Generally, that person is, in some sort of order: 1) the superstar player, 2) the coach or 3) the general manager.

It's apparently Braves fans' turn to point fingers at Bobby Cox, which, to me, is absolutely ludicrous. But it's happening.

A significant segment of them believe manager Bobby Cox should be held accountable for the team's recent failings, that the venerable Braves skipper should be replaced. But they would be hard-pressed to find that opinion shared by any of those who play for him or compete against him.

Yeah, ridiculous, right? And I'm not the only one. Chipper Jones feels the same way.

"He's not any different than he's ever been," Chipper Jones said of Cox, 67. "He's just not dealing with the same deck of cards that we had coming out of spring training.

"Other teams have had injuries, but not to the extent that we have. You give Bobby Cox the same deck of cards that we had coming out of spring training for a full 162 games, I guarantee you the standings look a lot different."

First of all, Chipper is dead on. The Braves have been injured and unfortunate this year, and nothing more. Secondly, most teams would kill to have Bobby running their ship (or having steered it to 14 consecutive division titles). And finally, this is a "JoePa Situation" in my mind.

Bobby Cox gets to coach in Atlanta as long as he wants to. He won a World Series and he owned the 1990's. He gets that right. And he'll know when the time is right to step down. Not us.