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Chipper Jones announces he will retire after this season

MLB, Chipper Jones, Atlanta Braves

Chipper Jones: HOF or not?

Chipper Jones announced that he will retire at the end of this season. Therefore, as we did with Hines Ward, it's time to discuss his Hall of Fame worthiness.

Chipper is going into his 19th season, all with the Braves, and he'll retire as one of the greatest switch-hitters ever to play the game.

Coming into this season, he has a career batting average of .304, but more importantly has a career OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) of .935, good for 31st all-time.

Jones has over 2600 hits, and will likely finish with around 2750 when all is said and done. It's not 3000, but most of the players ahead of him who are HOF eligible have been inducted.

He won the NL MVP in 1999, and had 5 other top 10 finishes. He was the offensive leader of the Braves throughout their historic NL East dominance in the 90s, was a 7-time All Star, and was one of the best 3rd basemen in baseball for over a decade.

If you ask me, he's a no-brainer. Chipper might not get in on the first ballot, but there's no doubt that he should be a Hall of Famer within a few years of eligibility.

What do you think? Is Chipper Jones a Hall of Famer?

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5/4/12 | King_Cardinal | 2519 respect

Heck yeah that Chipper is a hall of famer.

3/23/12 | ML31 | 3523 respect

gearhead wrote:

Wait a minute. You think so many recent Hall of Famers shouldn't have been elected, but you were cool with *Jim Rice?* That seems very, well, inconsistent.

An argument for inconsistency could be made for any time one "bubble" player gets in while another similar player does not. Unless one wants to draw the line and say X hits and X wins makes the Hall an automatic. Rice is one of those players where I feel a valid argument could be made either way. It doesn't really hurt the Hall that he is in and it wouldn't if he were left out either.

Besides... Put Rice up against many of the recent "borderline" inductees and he fares just as good if not better. So it may not be as inconsistent as you make it out to be...

3/23/12 | gearhead | 6350 respect

ML31 wrote:

I had to think about it for a bit... .But yes. He should be a Hall of Famer.

Oddly enough what cemented it for me was the fact that he played for the same team his entire career. that was the same thing that moved Jim Rice over the fence for me as well.

Wait a minute. You think so many recent Hall of Famers shouldn't have been elected, but you were cool with *Jim Rice?* That seems very, well, inconsistent.

3/23/12 | ML31 | 3523 respect