Jones Ties Career Best With 5 RBI Game; Has Words About Moyer

Chipper Jones had another great game on Saturday night (May 5) in the Atlanta Braves 13-9 win over the Colorado Rockies as he drove in a season high five runs. The five RBI game matches Chipper’s career best.  

The Braves were down 6-0 to the Rockies before Jones really got them kickstarted. In the top of the fifth inning, Chipper doubled in pitcher Mike Minor for his first RBI of the night at Coors Field in Colorado. In the top of the sixth inning he drove in shortstop Tyler Pastornicky and pinch hitter Juan Francisco on a single to center for RBIs two and three. RBIs four and five came in the top half of the seventh inning when another single scored right fielder Jason Heyward and pinch hitter Martin Prado.

Despite, Jones’ career-tying game the thing that possibly stood out the most from Saturday’s game was a controversy that brewed between Jones and the Rockies 49-year old starting pitcher Jamie Moyer, who earlier this season became the oldest starting pitcher to win a game in baseball history. Moyer accused Jones of stealing signals.

After the game Jones mentioned that Moyer’s accusation of him stealing signals “woke up a sleeping giant” and led to the Braves comeback after starting the game down 6-0 to the Rockies.

Jones told MLB.com: “He accused me of relaying a sign down 6-2 with a 3-0 count to Brian McCann. I have never relayed a sign to anyone while I’m on second base. You question our integrity, that’s wrong. I’ve never accused him of doctoring a baseball. I’ve never accused him of over-milligraming, nothing. That’s (garbage) and he woke us up. I didn’t see any signs on the 900-foot homers that were hit.”

Jones also told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s David O’Brien on Sunday: “I told (Todd) Helton and Tulo (Troy Tulowitzki) to tell him he could meet me in the tunnel to discuss it if he’d like, and I never heard back.” I love that Chipper 

Jones still has that kind of fire at age 40 in his final season.

I really don’t get why Moyer and other players and baseball people view stealing signs as such a big deal/bad thing in the first place. Sign stealing should be viewed as a great strategy/skill and not breaking one of baseball’s unwritten rules. So, Moyer was essentially making a huge deal out of something that baseball folk need to desperately get over. 

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It is now less than five days before I get to go to Busch Stadium up in St. Louis to see the Braves take on the Cardinals. I desperately hope that Chipper Jones is in the lineup for Friday night's game.

Chipper Ends Wild Game With Walk-Off

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated this blog, so I must apologize. It’s been an extremely hectic week with me working almost every day of the week and moving apartments during the week.

So, forgive me for going back a few days for this one.

The Atlanta Braves game on Wednesday (May 2) against the Philadelphia Phillies was probably the team’s (and maybe all of baseball’s) wildest game of the year, thus far. The Braves faced big deficits at multiple points during the game, made big comebacks, fell back down and then eventually won the game in extra innings 15-13.

Despite there being zero pitching from either team (which is interesting because both teams have top 10 pitching staffs [maybe even top 5] in the majors), this would’ve been a game that I would’ve killed to have seen. More than a month into the season I’ve seen about two and a half Braves games thanks to living in central Arkansas.

Seeing as how this is a blog about Chipper Jones’ final season there must be some sort of relevance in talking about this game, right? Yep, there is. For it was Chipper who ended this epic game with a walk off home run, the eighth walk off homer of his career, in the bottom of the eleventh.

Click HERE to see the shot

The home run came off of Phillies reliever Brian Sanches and is Jones’ 500^th home run as a professional baseball player (458 in the major leagues and 42 in the minor leagues [this number which came from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution apparently excludes homers in the playoffs, spring training and the all star game).

His homer was his fourth of the season. He would hit his fifth dinger of the season off of Colorado Rockies pitcher Matt Reynolds on Friday (May 4).  

Jones, who turned 40 recently, was joined by another 40-year old with a walk off on Wednesday. Rockies slugger Jason Giambi hit a pinch hit walk off homer to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers.

  
Jones said of his walk off homer: ''When I am in there, I want to make a splash. I did it tonight."