Call it a home team bias. This is a Braves blog after all, but all injuries aside, Chipper Jones is legitimately positioning himself among some of the greatest players of all time as he seemingly continues to improve with age. So he may miss a game here or there with vague injuries (toe, oblique, etc.), or leave a game with "dizziness," plus he has a pretty familiar past with the "freak injury" bug, but for my money there isn't anyone I'd rather have at bat in a big situation. You'd want Smoltz on the hill if you had to win one game, and you'd want Chipper at the plate if you needed one hit.

It seems like only recently that the baseball media have even begun to mention him in the same breath as the hall of fame. He certainly has the statistics to merit it. His .311 career average (Today's 4-4 bumped him up from .310) is second all-time for a switch hitter behind Frankie Frisch's .316. He's got the hardware covered: Ring? Check. Batting title? Check. MVP? Check.

Before we go into the full accumulation of his statistics, there are several other items of merit that deserve a mention. Aside from being the type of player who volunteers to drastically restructure his contract to help the team improve (the Tim Hudson deal), he'll also (most likely) end up as one of the handful of players to play their entire career in one uniform, although the Braves do have a running habit of setting their legends out to pasture with a shrug. We've had three 300 game winners wear our uniform in the past 25 years, all of whom won the majority of their games as Braves, and none of them won #300 as a Brave. But that can be left for another discussion, along with Smoltz and Murph and Hank and anyone else you'd like to bring into it, but I digress.

As Chipper wrapped up that nice little 4-4, 2 homer, 5 RBI performance, he continues to climb the all time ranks to much higher positions than I was aware of. Lets take a look:

- I already mentioned that his .311 average is 2nd ever among switch hitters (Just to throw it out there, fellow stat nerds, if you gave Chipper and Mickey Mantle 1,000 at bats, Chipper is going to come away with 13 more hits), but outside of the switch-hitting realm, that's also good for a tie for 103rd on the all-time list. But it gets better.

-His career On Base Percentage (for when they start putting it on the scoreboard, Mr. FYF) of .408 puts him 40th all time, ahead of Joe DiMaggio, Rickey Henderson and Cap Anson to name a few (and he's getting on base at around a .450 rate the past two seasons).

-His career Slugging Percentage of .547 is 27th all time. (Take that Hack Wilson, Mike Schmidt, Frank Robinson, Duke Snider, Ken Griffey, Jr., Mel Ott, Eddie Matthews, Willie McCovey, Shoeless Joe, etc.) I could keep going with Ty Cobbs, Tris Speakers and other early Hall of Famers, but you get the idea.

                      -Also, a surprising note for Braves fans, the top 100 also includes Fred McGriff (78th) and a tie for 95th                              between Ryan Klesko and David Justice. I'd imagine you'd be hard-pressed to find another team in                                   history that featured four of the 100 most prolific (slugging % wise) batters in the history of the game. But                          that's yet another blog. On with Chipper:

-Going the natural next step to OPS, Chipper's On Base + Slugging Percentage (.955) is 22nd all-time, ahead of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Junior Griffey, Cobb, Speaker and more Hall of Famers than you care to have me list. From 2006-2008, there was one player in the majors who maintained an OPS of over 1.000 in each season. His name wasn't Albert. His name wasn't Manny. His name was Chipper.

-Including today's five, Chipper has 1,402 runs batted in, which is good for 69th all time. With his next 13 RBI, he will pass Juan Gonzalez, Robin Yount, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire on that list. If he maintains his health and production for the majority of this season, he should end it around fellow Brave third bagger Eddie Matthews, who is 55th. He needs 516 RBI to pass Eddie Murray for most all-time by a switch-hitter. He has nine 100-RBI seasons, including eight in a row.

-His 415 home runs rank him 41st all time, third for a switch hitter.

-He has never struck out 100 times in a season and has averaged 1.09 BB/K for his career, remarkable for someone with his power credentials.

There's plenty more we could cover with Chipper, here. We could cover the fact that despite his impressive mantle of awards (no pun intended), he has been legitimately hosed by MLB out of at least one gold glove, as well as the 1995 NL Rookie of the Year (A certain blogger was 10 at the time and may have been reduced to tears at the Sportscenter announcement that Hideo Nomo had won the award). But it goes well beyond slights to the establishment. In 2001, in the prime of his career (Age 28 season), despite having won the MVP only two seasons prior, Chipper was shuffled to left field for the arrival of Vinny Castilla. And he took it like a champ. Lets think about this a bit more in hindsight and compare it to a few similar situations: The Mets didn't move David Wright to left when they signed Fernando Tatis, did they? Did the Orioles move Cal Ripken to the outfield when they signed a jacked up Mike Bordick? Hell no. Absolutely not. By no means. Despite that, he overcame it and was eventually given his position back, but it created a fair amount of trauma, both on Chipper's stat line and his health.

Also, this is very, very hypothetical and is something I most definitely plan on tackling in depth in a future post, but I've often wondered how the move from The Launching Pad to The Ted affected the power statistics of our predominately left-handed middle of the order in the late 90's. Sure, Chipper hit 45 dingers in 1999, but I can't help but imagine he'd have crept a little closer to 500 homers by now if he wasn't playing half his games staring at a 390 foot power alley in right center.

As hard as it is to believe, we drafted Chipper 18 years ago. We've watched him go from stud prospect, to MVP, to team leader, to one of the elder statesmen in the game. He presided over the majority of the longest championship run in professional sports history and has stuck with us through some very lean years since. He's not a player who's after every last dollar. He wants to win and if all the aches and pains in his body will allow him to, he'll be the last off the field in victory. His side-of-the-mouth southern drawl has been a welcome post-game interview feature since he first set foot on the field and there's absolutely no reason that same drawl shouldn't be heard all over Cooperstown as he gets voted in as a first ballot Hall of Famer some day. I just hope we get him another ring first.