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Friday, May 30, 2008
U Kno Who is tearin’ it up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U Kno Who is a little too tied up right now to come to the blog, so I decided to bring the blog to U Know Who.
Well, actually something just came up in my discussion with Chipper yesterday about All-Star stuff that made me go - HEY, the bloggers were just ALL over this topic, and here Chipper was just spilling it right out to me. You guys were thinking alike!
It’s about whether this .400 batting average bit (.420, actually, heading into the Cincinnati series) - and an almost instinctive desire to keep it there despite the ludicrousness of maintaining that pace too long - is costing him power.
(Sorry, the subject-verb separation in that sentence is terrible. But I’ve got a club sandwich to shove down, a river to cross, and a Great American Ballpark to walk to, so I’m forging on.)
Now, at first blush, I reacted like some of you guys did - good grief the guy is getting two hits a game, and he’s the only consistent offensive force in this lineup. He’s leading the team with 12 home runs, which puts him on pace for 36 for the season, and he’s got 35 RBIs, which also leads the Braves.
What else do you want?
A quick check and I see Chipper is also leading the majors with a .500 on-base percentage, he’s third with a .670 slugging percentage and second with a 1.170 OPS.
So why the fuss?
Straight from the (ahem) Hoss’s mouth? “Not driving the ball out of the ballpark quite the way I want,” he said.
And this: “This hitting .400 thing kind of takes away from your aggressiveness. Whereas you might look to juice a ball 2-0, I find myself trying to get hits, trying to get multiple-hit games and whatnot, and it’s taking away from some of the times during the course of a game where I might pick a spot and swing from the heels and try to break somebody’s back or just tie it up. That’s been the only thing in the streak that I’ve been on that’s cost me.”
So Chipper agrees with the other of you guys. Y’all are kindred spirits you see. And here’s what he said when I told him so:
“The slugging percentage is still there, the OPS is still there, the on-base percentage is still there,” Jones said. “So just because I haven’t hit a home run in over a week, not only do people you’re talking to say something about it, I’m thinking about it too because quite frankly, I’ve got 70 hits this year and not enough of them are for extra bases. And that bothers me.
“If I had 20 doubles and 15 homers, that’s great. That’s 35 extra base hits; that’s 35 singles. That’s OK. But the fact that I’ve only got 24, 25 extra base hits that’s bothers me. Because I’m not a singles guy.”
The exact numbers through Thursday’s game are: Chipper has 79 hits, 23 of them for extra bases (including 11 doubles).
And yes, he concedes that he’s going up to the plate, trying to keep the average up, almost in spite of himself. Here’s what I - and he - means by that.
“I’m not going to hit .400, you know, and the quicker I come to the realization that I’m not, then all this effort that goes into keeping my average over. 400, to be honest, would be better spent concentrating on getting caught up in the moment during the game,” Jones said. “If I got a pitcher set up, take that pitch, try and hit the ball to the moon.”
He says he’s going to keep taking the same approach at the plate, but just dig in a little more when those situations to really drive the ball come up. In the meantime, there are other things involved, as always.
Some of it is dictated by the game situation:
“If nobody is on, I’m more inclined to try and provide instant offense with two outs,” Jones said. “If I’m leading off an inning, I’m a leadoff hitter.”
Some of it depends on the pitchers:
“I’ve got to be really careful right now because pitchers are a little timid right now,” Jones said. “I don’t want to expand my zone to try and hit something that I’m not capable of driving. That’s my main concern is try and recognize what a guy is trying to do to me early in the count, whether he’s coming to me or not. Kinda go from there.” (He’s drawn 31 walks overall, and increasingly more by the day.)
Some of it is guarding against an instinct to try to do too much to help the team out of its offensive struggles, especially on the road:
“It’s hard because everybody is struggling. Yeah, you want to be the guy that snaps everybody out of it, but you can’t try and do it all by yourself. Sometimes you have to set the table so other guys can eat.”
Chipper said until Tuesday night when he pounded a ball off Rickie Weeks’ glove and drove a liner to center (for an out), he had been getting lucky here in the last 10 days. You don’t hit .420 without getting your share of flares and broken bat bloops.
But at least now you know - blog nation - he’s hungry for doing more. Now whether that’s in the front of his mind when he walked to the plate? I asked him that too. Because I can. And besides, I’m always curious what goes through a hitter’s mind at the plate. And I wouldn’t mind if somehow they could be played aloud like they were in Bull Durham. (“Go ahead, Meat, throw me that again.” Wasn’t that it?)
Anyway, Chipper’s thoughts when walking to the plate these days?
“When I walk to the plate I think about being the toughest out possible,” Jones said. “I don’t want to swing at bad pitches, I want to take my walks, but when he does come over the plate, I want to barrel it, one way or the other. That’s what I said last night (Tuesday night), first good night in 10 days. I was patient, took my walks and when it came over the plate, I barreled it. I hit two rockets last night. That’s what I’ve been shooting for and hopefully it’s starting to come back a little bit.”
Hey, the only thing this blog can’t do for you is give you the southern drawl Chipper used when he said “barrel it.” But you can’t hear it in your mind, can’t you?
As for the rest of this here blog (in Southern drawl), all I’m sayin in “Ask and ye shall receive.” Can I get an Amen?
OK, yes, apparently pretty punchy from the morning flight and all. More to come from GAP, where we all get to see Bruce and Griffey and sorry, not Matt Belisle. He got sent down. It’ll be Josh Fogg now on Saturday.
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