The Morning According to Us

Chipper Jones seems to be improving with age.

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"Of course we have to do this at Yankee Stadium." ... "Tell me about it."

Chipper Jones has hit, as our handy Baseball Prospectus notes, an absurd .332 with a .430 OBP and a .585 slugging percentage over the the last three years. This year, Larry Wayne is off to another one of those starts that make us wonder if he's the guy to flirt with .400 for long enough to keep it interesting. He's at .500 in his first two games, with an OPS of 1.625.

Jones is one of those players who doesn't play his age, but shows ours. Can it be that he was the ire of Mets fans, a September monster on his way to an MVP a full decade ago? Three years before, it was just his third year in the league and the first he really rounded into the form we've become so accustomed to that the Braves finally won a title. That was 1996. And now Jones is a productive 36, just weeks away from adding another digit.

You can appreciate Jones because he belies the more hardened Moneyball theme by being far more than a homer/walk/out machine on his way to a good OBP. Jones gets on base often the old-fashioned way, through a good eye—he has 100 more walks than strikeouts in his career—and a high lifetime batting average, now at .311 and rising. Jones has a .408 OBP over his entire career, a stunningly valuable number to anchor the middle of the lineup. The other thing we'll concede to liking about Chipper is that like Ken Griffey, his body has never taken on a discernable difference over the course of his career. And like the back of old baseball cards, we see a predictable graph in the category of "aging". After he bagged 25 steals at age age 27 and 14 more at age 28, he fell off and has never hit double digits again. His body has looked the same all along—come on, we all notice this now—and he never came back from a good winter weight session needing a new hat and eight more inches added to his suit. He's never hit more than the 45 home runs that got him the MVP in 1999, during a common peak year for players. He was 27. No, he's a guy with predictable maladies in his fourth decade, strains and pulls that seem to rob him of 30-40 games every year.

BP notes that "if the Braves aren't contending by the trading deadline, they'd be better off selling high on ther future Hall of Famer." Better that, they say, than letting Jones linger for a run at 500 home runs. He's at 409 now after taking Jamie Moyer deep last night. But the Braves went ahead and locked up Jones a few weeks ago with what will likely be his last deal. It'll take him to 40, and perhaps to stints at first base. He still grinds it out at third now.

"If there is such a thing as getting better with age, Chipper is that," said Bobby Cox, the only manager Jones has had in Atlanta, after Jones inked his most recent deal.

Still, Jones looks primed for perhaps one more great year before we refer to his age with every great play. According to BaseballReference.com, his stats most closely compare at this point with Larry Walker, Duke Snider, Jeff Bagwell and Vladimir Guerrero. Good company. That the former shortstop has done it steadily, and continues in that manner, without ever blowing us away with monster power or uncanny athleticism is a testament to both his understated style and also what we got used to during the recent years full of home runs we still don't trust.

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