Chipper Jones scores his 1500th run
Posted by Andy on August 6, 2010
A few nights ago here in Atlanta, the local folks made a big deal (rightly so) over Chipper Jones scoring his 1500th career run. It's not as exclusive a club as the 600 HR one but it has only 70 members all time. Click through for more.
The full list of all 70 players is here. Jones stacks up quite well in a list comprised almost entirely of great players:
- Tied for 26th best OPS+
- One of just 5 players to play most of their games at 3rd base (joining Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Wade Boggs, and Eddie Matthews). Other than catcher, of which there are none who scored at least 1500 runs and played most of their games at that postion, 3rd base is the next most scarce.
- 35th in RBI with 1490
- 21st in BB with 1404
Jones career OPS+ is likely to fall some by the time he retires, but his rankings for career totals (as opposed to career rates) are going to climb. With just 10 more RBI and 96 more walks, he'll become one of just 14 players with 1500 in each category, and of the other 13, eleven are HOFers (Pete Rose and Jim Thome are not currently in.) Obviously the high-offense era that Jones played in helps a lot, but it's not like that list is populated with lots of current players. Only 6 of the guys played in the last 25 years.
August 6th, 2010 at 7:50 am
You just put Barry Bonds in the hall of fame. 🙂 doesn't much change your point though.
August 6th, 2010 at 7:56 am
he´ll become one of only 11 with 1500 R, BB and RBI, because Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and Rickey Henderson do not have 1500 RBI. Of this eleven 10 ar HOFers (all except Thome)
August 6th, 2010 at 7:57 am
aehem, 9 of them are in (Thome and of course Bonds missing)
August 6th, 2010 at 7:57 am
Now this is awesome! I was tellin' someone before the season that Chipper will cement his HOF candidacy the day he reaches the 1500 Runs & 1500 RBI's mark. Everybody with that is in the Hall. Always loved Chipper.... and he might finish his career having only been with 1 team the whole time (from draft to retire). I think we all thought Ripken & Gwynn would be the last of that breed. I think Chipper would be smart to retire after this season, keepin his rates over .300/.400/.500, as that's another HOF marker. He's been a bit injury prone the last few years, he's near the end anyway.
August 6th, 2010 at 7:59 am
[...] had at least five extra base hits in three straight games since 5/12-14 2009. -Thursday, Chipper Jones became the 70th player in big league history to score 1,500 runs. -Thursday, the Padres recorded [...]
August 6th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Devon, as much as I'd like to see him retire, I don't think it will happen. He is still on his contract until 2013, thats his age 41 season. After that it is likely he will hang up the cleats.
August 6th, 2010 at 8:22 am
IMO, he was a lock HoFer before the season. I think I've heard quite a bit about him retiring at the end of the year with Bobby Cox. He's not in perhaps the top 30-50 all-time, but somewhere in the 50-75 range all time IMO.
August 6th, 2010 at 8:38 am
I feel like you are hinting at next weeks HOF Poll andy 😛
August 6th, 2010 at 9:27 am
If Jones retires, I think he has the longest career with only one manager. I can't remember who currently holds the record but I'm sure one of you smart people can figure it out.
August 6th, 2010 at 9:59 am
I like the manager question Twisto... Will Helton leave the Rockies or Jeter the Yankees? I tend to think that "players with one team" category is always going to have an active player or two in that category. If you think about it from the human perspective, there will always be someone who's willing to take the home town discount, who needs to be good enough to demand/request it and will not sacrifice his family without cause.
August 6th, 2010 at 10:09 am
"IMO, he was a lock HoFer before the season."
Agreed. Heck, he was already at 60 WAR after the 2006 season, then had two of his best seasons the next two years. His batting-title season in '08 probably made him a lock, if he wasn't already. He has a good chance to reach 80 WAR by the end of this season.
Another thing: Chipper has never had a bad year. He's been above average every single season--nothing lower than 2.4 WAR (not counting his 8-G, 4-PA stint in '93). He was worth at least 3.5 WAR every season from '96 to '08. He's had a remarkable run.
August 6th, 2010 at 10:34 am
#1, oops, heh.
#8, I have somebody else in mind for next week, as per a request from Sean himself. Hint: he stinks at washing his truck. 🙂
August 6th, 2010 at 10:57 am
I agree with Matt Y above - I don't think Chipper needs any of the milestone numbers mentioned above to be a first ballot HOF. I think of his Hall of Fame worthiness as the same a Derek Jeter. You don't really need to look at the numbers to feel like he is a hall of famer (although Chipper's numbers DO show it).
It will be nice for him to reach the 1500/1500/1500 "club", as it does nothing to diminish that accomplishment - his addition would further prove how special it is.
August 6th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
I pretty much hate Chipper Jones, but only because he's been a very above average to great player for a rival team of my favorite team. But that being said, he's definitely a hall of famer... if you want to hold something against him, I'm willing to offer up his left field experiment (which obviously isn't his fault)... but even that wasn't so bad.
For the sake of the NL East, I'm thrilled to see him go.. if he does decide to go.
August 6th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
I have been an admirer of Chipper for years. My son, who lives in Greenville, SC, owns one of his sweatchirts. Recently I looked up the Leaders section of this website and calculated his place among switch hitters. To my surprise he is second to Frankie Frisch on lifetime betting average with .306. The only other two switch hitters who have lifetime .300 average are Pets Rose and Roberto Alomar. Mickey Mantle, Tim Raines and Bernie Williams hit over .300 until the last two or three years of their careers, when their average dropped below .300.
Among switch hitters Chiper is in third place for home runs, RBIs, bases on balls, extra base hits and slugging percentage. He is in fourth place for total bases, doubles,and on base percentage. Chipper is not in the highest ranking for stolen bases, but his percentage of successful steals is 77%. They didn't pay him to steal bases, but his record with 147 steals is highly respectable.
Barring injury Chipper should pass 1500 RBIs and 2500 hits. He has always been a good third baseman as well.
August 6th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
He can't possibly get into the Hall of Fame! Cmon, a grown man willingly calling himself Chipper? Unpossible!
He should (and will) get in. Not sure about J K, though.
August 6th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
In the last sentence of the original post you say: "Obviously the high-offense era that Jones played in helps a lot...." One way to adjust for that is to look at the b-ref Neutralized Batting table for Chipper. which credits him with 1,441 "neutralized" runs. That would move him down a few spots from his current rank at 70th all-time, down to to 79th. Of course that's an estimated neutralized runs rank, because that's neutralizing his numbers but not anybody else's. Right now we can't run a PI search for neutralized numbers, although that would be an entertaining new functionality (an "actual numbers/neutralized numbers" radio buttion?) and would make the neutralized stats more useful.
August 6th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
The "high powered offense" debate is so overrated. Yes, more runs are scored but that doesn't mean a player should be any less credited for his achievements.
August 6th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
The longest career of playing for only one manager may be Eddie Rommel, with the A's 1920-1932. The obvious candidates would be someone under Mack or McGraw. I didn't check any other possibilities.
Jones will ruin that if he keeps playing next season (and Cox doesn't change his mind). But he is still likely to be the best player who has only played for the Braves. The oldest team in the majors, and their best career player might be Bruce Benedict. Smoltz blew his chance when he made it back to the bigs with Boston last season.
August 6th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Jimmy Dykes (15 years) or Christy Mathewson (17 years), depending on what you count as years.
August 6th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Oh, but then they played for another manager somewhere else. . . .
August 6th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
#18 I could not disagree more.
In 2000, there were 5.14 runs per game. In 1968, it was 3.42 runs per game. Those are extremes, but let me use the extreme example to illustrate.
That means that in 2000, there were just about exactly 50% more runs scored than in 1968. It follows then, that 50% more RBI were registered as well. Furthermore, it follows that those extra RBI were roughly evenly distributed throughout the lineup, i.e. the average #3 hitter in 2000 probably drove in about 50% more runs than the average #3 hitter in 1968, and so on for the other batting order positions.
So, bottom line, if a player played his entire career with the 2000 conditions vs a player with the 1968 positions, he'd need to play 50% fewer games to amass the same RBI (or runs scored) total. Thus, while it might have taken a guy 15 years to do it in the 1968 environment, a guy could do it in 10 years in the 1968 environment.
There can be no doubt that Jones played in a much higher run-scoring environment than the majority of MLB players historically and therefore has a significant advantage in accumulating high counting-stat totals. That's simple truth.
The fact that not too many other players qualify is a bigger indicator of the achievement. For example, I think Chipper eventually joining 1500/1500/1500 will be more impressive than hitting 500 HR. The 500 HR club used to be small but has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 15 years, really spoiling its worth from a long-term perspective. (I talked to a 29-year-old yesterday who was flabbergasted to learn that Frank Robinson was once 4th in career HR. He had "no idea" that Robinson even had 500.) The club Chipper will be joining is a lot smaller and has not been infiltrated by too many guys from the recent high-offense era. That's worth something.
There aren't a lot of other guys close to joining the 1500/1500/1500 club either. Gary Sheffield is 25 walks short but seems retired. Manny Ramirez is 187 walks short and thus has a decent shot. The net closest guy after them is Bobby Abreu, who currently has 1246 RBI, 1312 BB, and 1329 R. Already at age 36 he would need to play 4 more productive years at least to have a shot.
August 6th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Jim, at post #18 I'm not sure why taking into account the offensive context in which a batter achieved his numbers is "overrated". Larry Walker had 1,355 rusn scored in his career. That puts him in the top 100 career totals all-time. Nobody suggests we should change that fact. But it also is useful information to know that given that many more runs were scored in the time and place that Walker played than usual across baseball history, and that therefore the runs he scored were somewhat less valuable, in terms of how much they contributed to his team's chances of winning games, than the same number of runs would have been in other environments. B-ref neutralized estimate suggests that in an average run-scoring environment, Walker's 1,355 runs would have been worth something like 1,201 runs, which would be around 163rd all-time instead of top 100. You personally may or may not find that kind of information interesting, but it would seem to be very useful in accurately evaluating Walker's contributions to his teams in comparison to the contributions of other players in history to their teams.
August 6th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
I think I can see where #18 is coming from, I don't agree, but I get it. Neutrilizing only some numbers makes all the arguments moot. In every era someone had an advantage, I mean, we're not talking about how high up on the all time triples list Steve Finley (or Carl Crawford if you prefer) would be if he played in the stadiums of yesteryear with ginormous outfields are we? So sometimes it seems like we're only 'discounting' this era or generation... which does occasionally seem a bit silly, but what are you gonna do?
August 6th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
One reason Chipper has been able to reach the threshold of being the 31st hitter in the 1,500+ R/1500+ RBI club is that he has spent most of his career batting in the #3 spot in the batting order. Using PI's Game Finder we can see that, since 1920, Chipper is 10th in games started in the #3 spot, and will likely be up to 8th within a few weeks. The leadoff and #2 batters in the lineup get lots of run-scoring opportunities but their RBI chances are limited. The cleanup and #5 batters get many RBI opportunities but their chances to be batted in themselves are more limited. That #3 spot in the order is the sweet spot for a balance of both scoring, and knocking in, runs. If you look at the NL Batting Splits page for 2010 you'll see that in the NL this season so far, batters batting in the #3 spot have 1,036 runs and 1,036 RBI.
August 6th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Honus Wagner played 19 years for Fred Clarke. They started out together in Louisville in 1897. When the NL contracted from twelve to eight teams in 1900, they moved on to Pittsburgh. Wagner was still there when Clarke retired after the 1915 season.
August 6th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
I remember reading somewhere years ago that Don Drysdale had the most years under the same manager, namely Walter Alston. He played from the beginning of 1956 through mid-1969, with no full major league seasons missed due to injury, return to the minors, military service, etc. So, that's about 13 1/2 seasons. Chipper has certainly passed that mark. As for Honus Wagner, that beats Drysdale, too, even when the "pre-modern era" years are subtracted. But I just re-read the last line about Clarke retiring after the 1915 season. Wagner played until 1917. So, it wasn't a whole major league career under the same manager.
August 6th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
@25
You make a good point and it's worth considering that Chipper Jones has had as good an opportunity as maybe anyone to score/drive in 1500 runs. But the flip side of that argument is that he has earned that opportunity. For example Pete Rose is the all time hits leader, but he has also played more games than anyone else. So do we discredit all those hits he got because nobody else has played 3500 games? Or do we say he earned it because he was a great hitter and that's why people were willing to give him an opportunity to play for 24 years?
August 6th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
i neutralize stats so often now, when I see Yaz had a 170 ops+ in 1968 with 23-74-.301 (119 walks) it says a ton about today's numbers, that I don't have time to go into right now...
August 6th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Although he played for the White Sox in between, Eddie Collins played for Connie Mack at age 19 and at age 43.
August 6th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Basmati: I certainly didn't intend to diminish Chipper's accomplishment -- I was only seeking to better understand it. As for Rose, he was unquestionably a great player for a long, long time. But WAR confirms that from age 41 on, his last 600 games or so, he was below-replacement level and probably should not have been playing. But he was pursuing records and he was too much of an icon to be forced out of the lineup, especially when he was his own manager. Cobb, Aaron and Musial all were still generating above-replacement level value when they retired, and if Rose had done what they did -- quit before he became a liability to his teams -- he would have finished with fewer hits than they did.
August 7th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Birtelcom - I know you weren't trying to diminish Chipper, I was just trying to make the point that sometimes an argument against some of these achievements is that someone played more games than someone else, but you could argue that is something that should be counted in their favour not against them.
I take your point on Pete Rose, he was before my time so while I enjoy learning about players from the past I never saw him play.
August 7th, 2010 at 7:37 am
obviously a player's neutralized numbers going up or down dramatically tells you the difficulty of the environment to score runs, right? Rose's go up dramatically, Jones' go down a little bit, Schmidt's go way up, heck, even Bagwell's go up a bit. I suppose, though, they don't necessarily change how good the player was, and Chipper's plaque is cast...