Is Chipper a Brave for life?

[HMFFL]

Chipper Jones wants to finish his career as a Brave. Chipper Jones also wants that career to span four more seasons. For his sake, I hope both things happen. Being a pragmatist, I don’t think both will.

Jones is 36. The batting title he just won offers further testimony that he’s one of the great hitters of the age. But even with his skills undiminished, his body remains an issue. He was diagnosed Wednesday with tendinitis of the shoulder, and the Braves’ post-MRI press release said “the overall structure of the shoulder looked normal for a player of Jones’ experience.”

And that’s the thing. Chipper has logged 14 full big-league seasons, and it shows. Only once in the past four has he played as many as 130 games. This year he played 128 - three as a designated hitter, 10 as a pinch-hitter. As Frank Wren, the Braves’ general manager, said this week: “We’re going to have to assume [120 games] is the number.”

Jones is under contract through next season. He has already renegotiated his deal once to defer money and help his team payroll-wise. Would he do it twice? Would this proud player take another hometown discount when there figures to be an opportunity in that other league as a full-time DH?

And what of the Braves? In 2010 or 2011, would a 120-game third baseman satisfy their needs? Would they move Jones to first and thereby displace Casey Kotchman, whom Wren regards as an “80-to-100 RBI man”? (For the record, Chipper drove in 75 runs this season, the second-lowest total of those 14 years.) And would any of us care to see Jones languish on a team going nowhere, which this one could well be?

I was here in July 1990, and I remember how traumatic the severance with Dale Murphy was. But I also know Bobby Cox, then the GM, waited two years too long to trade Murph, and the delay did no favors for either the player or the team.

I wish I could say I see a happy ending for Chipper and the Braves, but I’d be lying. I’m thinking the greatest everyday Brave since Aaron will wind up the way Aaron did - in some other team’s uniform.

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[bravesatl]

hopefully