Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: Freeman, Upton, Ruiz, and… *sigh* Chipper

NL East: 10 Most Compelling Players

WILL LEITCH / SPORTSONEARTH.COM

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Freddie Freeman, Braves. It was only one year ago that Freeman signed his eight-year, $135 million deal, and how excited he must have been when he signed it. It’s a lot of money, obviously, but he also must have been thrilled to know that he was signing with one of the most stable franchises in baseball, a team built to compete for a division title regularly. One calendar year later, everything on the Braves has exploded, with a new GM, a new stadium on the horizon and just about every other quality player on the team shipped away. How does Freeman respond when he looks around and sees that he’s the only real star left on this team? Is he really that much of a star anyway? Will he freak out if the Braves trade Craig Kimbrel? These next seven years must seem really uncertain right now.

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. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

B.J. Upton, Braves. Upton hit 28 home runs two years ago and stole 31 bases. He was almost a 30-30 guy! Now Upton is basically the epitome of Free Agent Disaster, setting a franchise record for strikeouts and, by the end of last year, practically batting behind the pitcher in the lineup. How does a person fall off a cliff like this when they’re supposed to be in their prime? He was actually better last year than he was in 2013. What has happened to Upton is baffling in every way … and he’s still going to be in the lineup every day in 2015, on a team with no illusions of contending. (Well, maybe some illusions.) Upton is a daily example of why this game is so impossible to figure out.

Working Out

A couple of days ago, we shared a tweet from earlier in the off-season that Braxton Davidson sent as he was working on hitting with Albert Pujols. Seems he is not the only stud prospect in the system with connections: check out our 11th-ranked prospect:

That’s Adrian Beltre with him. Good choice. Oh, and Ruiz has an adorable boxer, too.

Next: The Just-Missed List of Exciting Braves Prospects

Chipper Jones REALLY Needs a Hobby

If you’ve been following Chipper Jones on news or on twitter, you may have heard that he’s done a bit of work on the JFK assassination. As such, he has some definite opinions on the topic, which he’s quite willing to share.

Unfortunately, that’s now branching out into other historically tragic events.

A report from AL.com shows that while Chipper deleted this tweet that you’ll nonetheless see below (memo to all: once on the Internet, always on the Internet), it was certainly up long enough to garner a whole lotta reaction.

A twitter follower snagged the above screenshot, and also picked up some of the reactions.

Just for the record, though: no, the FBI did no such thing, and those who have pressed the “hoax” conspiracy theory are idiots who need to actually go find at least one of the families involved and see just how real that event was to them… actually, on the other hand, they should probably never be in contact with most humans, period. I’m all for holding authorities accountable for the truth, but that’s not what this is.

I won’t count Chipper as a member of that group, but he certainly has been sucked in to their stories. At least he opted to remove the tweet.

Get a hobby, CJ… maybe a minor-league hitting coach job to start with?