Despite being a first-ballot Hall of Fame player, Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones still doesn’t get enough respect for his defense.
It really shouldn’t bother me and I’m sure it doesn’t bother Chipper Jones, but it still pains me as an Atlanta Braves fan that people don’t respect the glove of the third baseman.
What really refueled my anger with this topic is the recent player card of Chipper they released on MLB The Show 20. I’ve been lost in this game since the shutdown and was excited to see they were putting out a Chipper Jones card from his MVP season in 1999.
But then I look at the defensive rating they gave him and it brought back old feelings.
They gave him a fielding rating of 67, which makes him a bronze defender in the game. And they also put his arm strength rating at 71 and reaction at 65.
I believe all of those ratings are out of 100, so you can see that’s pretty poor.
To be fair, 1999 was not one of his best defensive seasons as he made 17 errors and had a .950 fielding percentage.
But this is the problem with trying to judge someone defensively based on numbers — a whole other issue I could ramble on about. Anyone who watched Chipper play third base on a nightly basis know how good he was with the glove.
I still argue that there wasn’t anyone better at charging and bare-handing a slow-roller than Chipper.
And while he may not have had a ton of range after the knee surgeries, I thought he still had really good reaction time, especially on balls to his right.
I’m not going to sit here as a biased Braves fan and try to convince you that Chipper was the greatest defensive third baseman of all-time, but I will argue that he doesn’t get nearly the respect he deserves for that aspect of his game.
People are going to point to his negative DRS and UZR to try and show me he wasn’t, while most of those people probably never watched Chipper play the field.
And yes, it still bothers me that David Wright won the Gold Glove in 2007 and 2008 when Chipper probably should have won one of those — especially in 2008 when he led all NL third baseman in DRS (10).
Those were some of the best defensive highlights I could find in the MLB vault. Obviously, most of his highlights are from the plate.
Chipper Jones was a great baseball player — a first-ballot Hall of Famer — but it stills pains me that he doesn’t get the respect he deserves for what he did in the field. As Braves fans who know just how good he was at third, let’s never forget.