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The Baseball Show: Chipper Jones is Retiring

March 23, 2012 By 1 Comment

Last night on The Baseball Show, Mike Rosenbaum (The Golden Sombrero, Bleacher Report), M.J. Lloyd (Halo Hangout, Off Base Percentage) and I discuss the following show topics:

-Mike’s move to Bleacher Report as a featured writer
-Prospects and players that have been impressive around Spring Training thus far
-Chipper Jones’ retirement announcement
-Would you rather have a player hang around as long as possible, or retire on their own terms?
-Dusty Baker on the hot seat, our reaction
-The Arte Moreno GQ interview
-As always, much more and a preview of next week’s over/under & predictions show

Filed Under: The Baseball Show by Diamond Hoggers Tagged With: , ,

Chipper on Jason Heyward: “He’s 90 Percent Back”

February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The significance of us sponsoring Jason Heyward’s Baseball Reference page could mean only one thing: we felt that the man was a generational talent ready to blossom in front of our eyes last year.

He wasn’t just rewarded with our admonishment. There was another Opening Day home run. There were SportsCenter comercials. A twitter account created solely to track when he hits a home run. He became Nike’s new ‘Swingman’.

But then the struggles came, and the injuries lingered. Heyward’s sophomore campaign became one continuous desolate ruin.

By reading an article focused on the reconstruction of J-Hey by Paul Newberry, we learn that Chipper Jones seems to think the worst is behind Heyward.

“He’ll get it done. He’ll get it back. He’s 90 percent back,” Jones said.

I hope Chipper’s right. This guy has a chance to be the crown jewel of the entire league if he’s right. There’s some other interesting points in the write-up–like Heyward coming off a bit ‘snarky’ when asked about childhood memories of David Justice and Fred McGriff.

There’s also a bit where new Braves hitting coach Greg Walker mentions this:

“We went back and looked at 2010, when he was really good,” Walker said. “We said to him, ‘OK, this is what you did. You’ve done it before, so that’s you.’ We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We’re not trying to change Jason Heyward. We’re trying to get him to maximize his potential. We showed him. We filmed him and showed him what he looks like now, and how he looked in 2010. He saw the difference. To be honest with you, we haven’t made a lot of changes. We’re just trying to clean him up and get him back to where he was.”

So if you’re keeping score at home, Greg Walker and the Braves do not want to change Jason Heyward. But they want him to hit like he did in 2010.This idea is absurd, because if you saw him at the plate for much of last year, of course the Braves would like to change Jason Heyward. But you must be careful with the treatment and wording of such things around young potential stars.

And my mind shifts back to that rumor we heard way back when–when someone had said that the legendary Bobby Cox had said that Heyward was like a Ferrari: you have to be careful with them, you don’t want to dent them.

Filed Under: Atlanta Braves, spring training Tagged With: , ,

The Atlanta Braves are going to be alright

June 24, 2011 By 5 Comments

The Atlanta Braves sit at 43-33, 10 games over the .500 mark and four games behind the Philadelphia Phillies for the coveted first place spot in the NL East.

The Braves enter their three game weekend series in San Diego on the mend. And when these guys get fully healthy they’ve got the opportunity to be a downright scary squad.

They’ve weathered some tough storms in the early part of this season, and have still managed to play 10 games above .500 baseball. They’ve gotten barely anything out of Jason Heyward–who someday should evolve into the biggest prize in all of the game. It might not be this year, but it’s fair to expect that Heyward will perform better for the remainder of the year than he has so far. Another player who falls in that category is Dan Uggla, who has been way worse than his career norms.

If they can just remain reasonably healthy and continue to tread water at the current pace for a few more weeks, they’re going to get back Martin Prado and Tommy Hanson back by the middle of July. That’s when this team will open it’s sales and be running wide awake, we presume. By then, they could be the best all around team in baseball.

This squad is likable for many reasons.

One of those reasons? They’re our MLB: The Show ’11 team of choice (with the addition of Michael Bourn). Johnny Venters, Chipper Jones, Craig Kimbrel, Uggla, Heyward, Prado, Jordan Schaefer, Nate Mclouth, Brian McCann, the list goes on and on. It’s a nice nucleus they’ve compiled to run down those Phillies.

The Braves are going to be right the thick of things until the end of things. Count on it.

Filed Under: Atlanta Braves Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Atlanta gets a huge lift from Brooks Conrad, Heyward looking good

June 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

[Box Score]

[AJC Braves]
I listened to about 8 innings of this game on the MLB At-Bat Radio app while playing MLB the Show.

They’re calling him “Clutch Conrad” in Atlanta, but if Brooks Conrad keeps hitting bombs like this one I don’t know how you could possibly call him anything else.

K-Rod imploded and the Braves eventually won it in the bottom of the 10th inning to salvage one game in the series. Jason Heyward walked, singled twice, drove in a run and scored a run.

Chipper Jones also matched his career high with 5 RBI in this game including 3 hits and a home run, but left the game with a strained abductor muscle.

Filed Under: Atlanta Braves, bonus baseball, New York Mets Tagged With: , , ,

Brian McCann saves the Braves

May 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Brian McCann had the big moment yesterday, as Wandy Rodriguez had shut the Braves down for 8 innings. In the 9th inning with two outs, Mcann pinch hit and homered off Astros closer Mark Melancon. This tied the game at 1-1 and sent the game into extra innings.

In the 11th inning, McCann homered again off Jeff Fulchino to give the Braves a 3-1 walkoff victory at Turner Field. This also happened to be a game in which Jason Heyward (1 for 3, two walks) and Chipper Jones (1 for 5) returned from injury. The Braves now head out to Arizona to play a Diamondbacks team that plenty of teams are making hay against. This is a time in which the Braves can really make a move in the NL East.

Early in the season I heard a fair share of Atlanta Braves fans say that they didn’t think that they could catch the Phillies so they were actually rooting for the Phillies if the Phillies’ opponent was anyone that could be considered a threat in the Wild Card race. With the way Philadelphia is having trouble scoring runs, and the fact the surging Braves are just 1 and 1/2 games behind the leaders of the division with Florida sandwiched in between.

Filed Under: Atlanta Braves, bonus baseball, Houston Astros, walk off wins Tagged With: , , , , ,

Larry Wayne Jones is not quite done yet

February 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

File this under ‘things that make us happy’ category.

It’s been a quiet off-season but last we heard, Chipper Jones was going to attempt a heroic comeback this season to go out on top after a heartbreaking season-ending knee injury last season.

Today, he knocked a cover off of the baseball. Here’s a pic of it. And here’s a tweet from the AJC’s Dave O’ Brien.

We weren’t ready to say goodbye to this cowboy just yet. So if he’s knocking the cover off the baseball in January there’s a decent chance we’ve got one more summer in the sun with Chipper Jones.

Filed Under: Atlanta Braves Tagged With: