Chipper Jones is the best Hittin' 3rd Baseman ever!!

 With my old buddy Chipper bout to re-tire after this here season, I reckoned it was damn sure time to point out to all my kinfolk and friends why he's the best ever to wield the bat at 3rd base.


Here be my fancy number usin!!!




 Now don't gt me wrong, I still think that Mike Schmidt feller  is the greatest 3b of all time because of his purty fieldin'.  But ,just with the bat Chipper could not be messed with!! (plus my wife/goat thinks he's cute)


for those of you who don't understand these fancy numbers,  go to http://www.fangraphs.com/   and there's a glossary to splain it all to yee.

my reasons why Chipper is best


WAR is a number come up with by baseball nerds that makes it easy for us hillbillies to just yell out one number and show we know what the hell we's talkin bout. It counts dee-fense,  hittin ,and base runnin

well, here are the top 8 in 3b fWAR:

Arod- 114.1
Schmidt- 110.6
Matthews- 107.2
Boggs- 94.8
Brooks Robinson-94.6
Brett- 91.6
Chipper-89.7
Santo- 79.3


So it isn't his fancy  nerd stat  WAR that does it, in fact WAR's heavy use of deefense hurts Chipper to the tune of almost 10WAR of his career.

 But  you can eliminate Arod as over half his numbers came at SS which is counted  heavier in WAR,(like my wife/goat,  but shhhhhh!) Robinson's entire value comes almost entirely from defense, Boggs DH'd a fair bit to aid his WAR towards the end and wasn't much of a power hitter.

 No , it really comes down to Schmidt, Brett, Matthews and Chipper for the 3b Batting title.



here's the numbers :

when it comes to career OPS:(thats when you take how often he got on base and add it to how many times he hit doubles triples or homers or sluggin percentage)

Schmidt- .907 over 10,062 PA's

Matthews- .885  over 10,101 PA's

Brett- .856 over 11,625 PA's

Chipper- .934  over 10,363 PA's


So you like OBP more than OPS?

Schmidt-.380
Matthews-.376
Brett-    .369
Chipper- .402


counting stats wise, Chipper doesn't have the 512 HR's of Matthews nor the 548 HR's of Schmidt,  but he will be the 3b RBI king by the end of the year, not to mention more BB's than K's.


So it's power you like?  Well let's look at the SLG% and Isolated Power of our group of 4.(Isolated Power...i forgot what it means. go look it up and tell me)

Schmidt- SLG-.527, ISO-.260

Matthews- SLG-.509  ISO-.238

Brett-       SLG- .487   ISO-.183

Chipper-    SLG- .532   ISO- .227

So far the only number where Chipper lags is ISO power.  But I never said he was the best at every damn thing  hell!!

wOBA? Chipper won that too :(wOBA is so damn fancy and nerdy the folks that made it up caint even splain it)

Chipper- .399
Schmidt- .395
Matthews- .390
Brett     -.374



 But here's the real hog baller,  and the thing that makes Chipper king of the still,.  He swung both ways!! (and I don't mean like Kallyfornee folk neither)  he was a switch hitter and a damn good un.

Now the nerd heads have argued bout this more than an Indian buyin hogs,  and have yet to give any bonus  for switch hitting, and much of this is due to the FACT that most switch hitters ain't worth a damn from one side or the other.  Chipper tho, he's a fine swinger don't matter what side he's on :

Left - .947 OPS  .229 ISO,.401 wOBA wRC+146

Right - .869 OPS  .192 ISO,.374 wOBA,wRC+128


most fellers struggle to be above avg from their weak side as , Chipper kicked more ass than Mike Tyson!

 IMO, his ability to switch hit HAS to be worth 1more fancy WAR a season(150 games played) in added value.

You divide his games played(2436) by 150 and you get 16.24 .  you add 16 WAR to Chipper's career numbers and you get ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................(sorry for the long drum roll, counting toes and making marks on the wall takes a lick of time)......................................................................................................................................................................................................

105.7

This puts him 5 WAR behind That Schmidt feller , exactly where I think he belongs as the 2nd greatest 3rd baseman of all time.

and hell, that ain't so damn bad at all!!!!!

hate to see ya go Chipper,  but

see ya at the fishin hole!!