Is Chipper Playing Too Often?

Hello again everyone from the Braves’ outpost in southeast Michigan. Spring has totally skipped us, as it was in the 50’s and 60’s yesterday and the 90’s today!

On the baseball front, the Braves are in the middle of a hot one with San Diego today. And they’re going at it without Chipper Jones in the lineup for the first time in quite some time. In fact, I’ve contemplated posting this before, but with Chipper resting today, the timing seemed right. My question is this: Are the Braves resting Chipper often enough at age 39? The situation might surprise you somewhat.

The first thing to consider is just how much is Chipper playing? Going into today’s game, he was on pace to play in 147 games. I’ll give you as long as you want to think of other third basemen his age that have played that often. OK, I’ll save you some effort. Since 1948, no third baseman his age or older has played in that many games. The closest comparison is the 40 year old season for Graig Nettles for San Diego. Graig actually played well (in the context of the offensive levels of his time), putting up an OPS of 120. But he only played in 137 games.

Playing in 147 games would be the most games played by Chipper since 2003 when he was 31. It also seems eerily similar to me to 2009, when Chipper tried to answer his critics by playing through injuries. He wound up appearing in 143 games, but his OPS of 117 was a drop of 59 points from his prior season. Chipper has always seemed to suffer from minor nagging problems, but in my opinion the team’s been better off when he’s rested.

While the numbers that Fred posted yesterday show the value that Chipper brings to the table, they don’t show the dramatic falloff in the numbers in May. Especially since it became public knowledge that he is suffering with a torn meniscus in his “good” knee, his performance has actually been ugly, or Uggla-esque, if you prefer. In his last 10 games, his line was 41 at bats, 1 run, 7 hits, 0 homers, 2 RBI’s, 6 BB’s, and 11 K’s. His BA for the period was .171.

I think that Fredi Gonzalez has generally done a good job resting Brian McCann. On the other hand, I think he has pretty much given up on his preseason pledge to give Chipper one or two days off a week. My guess is that this was heavily influenced by the quick start that Chipper had, plus the slow start the overall offense had.

The question is this: Are we just seeing one of Chipper’s slumps? Are we seeing the result of his “good” knee injury? Are we seeing the result of a fatigued 39 year old future Hall-Of-Famer going to the gate as often as asked? To me, it doesn’t really matter. If the decision has been made to not have surgery on the right knee unless it’s injured further, the only option a manager has to address the problem is to give Chipper more time off. While I love to watch him play, I hope that today represents a new approach for Fredi. That’s my take; what’s yours?