There seems to be a pretty decent chance that Chipper Jones
could start his season a little bit earlier than planned from his knee surgery.
Jones could be back in the Atlanta Braves lineup as soon as Tuesday night in
the Braves second game of a three game series against the Houston Astros at
Minute Maid Park in Houston.
Braves beat writer for MLB.com Mark Bowman broke the news on
his Twitter account on Monday saying: “Chipper felt good today. Could be
activated in time to start tomorrow's game.”
Jones’ season debut was initially expected to come on
Friday, April 13 during the Braves home opener at Turner Field against the
Milwaukee Brewers.
However, Jones returning early could be something that the
struggling Braves right now could desperately use. The Braves are 0-4 to start
the season and have looked atrocious losing those four games to frankly
horrible baseball team. The Braves opened the season by getting swept by the
New York Mets, who many predicted (including me) would be in the basement of
the National League East Division this season. The Braves then dropped the
first game of their series against the Astros, who were the worst team in
baseball last season and shouldn’t be much better this season, tonight.
I don’t expect a whole lot out of Jones when he rejoins the
Braves lineup (we all know he’s not the player he used to be), but just his
veteran presence in the lineup should be at least somewhat of a boost to the
ballclub. With this being Chipper Jones’ final season in the big leagues you
know that he doesn’t want to go out on a crappy ballclub, so he’s really got to
get in there and get these guys rolling. This club on paper from roster spot
number one to 25 is pretty good, but they always seem to underachieve. Being
the leader of the clubhouse a lot of that is on Chipper and he needs to put his
foot down now.
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| Proof the Braves need Jones back in lineup comes from replacement Juan Francisco's 3 error game on Monday |
Even more so than using Jones’ bat in the lineup they need
his steady glove back at third base. Jones’ replacement on Monday night, Juan
Francisco (who recently was acquired in a trade from the Cincinnati Reds)
committed an utterly ridiculous three errors, including two on a SINGLE PLAY.
If Chipper does return to the lineup on Tuesday night (game time
in Houston is 7:05), I’d love to see it, but unfortunately won’t be able too.
There hasn’t been a single Braves game televised on national TV, and even
though the Astros are one of the four local teams where I live, this game isn’t
being shown in favor of the Texas Rangers/Seattle Mariners game.
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