I have a vested interest in the success of Chipper Jones. No, he is not on one of my fantasy teams (I wish!), I own nearly every one of his rookie cards and I hope he can tack on a few more amazing seasons so he’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Jones was batting over .400 for most of the season, but he re-injured his quadricep a few weeks ago and has dropped down to .394 (it’s still like 2 1/2 Tulowitzkis).

The Braves could end up being sellers at the trading deadline, which would mark the first time in over a decade that they will be attempting to build for the future before the deadline. They have been plagued by injuries to Yunel Escobar, Brian McCann, and John Smoltz. The Braves disabled list looks like an all-star team, so it would be smart for Bobby Cox to get thrown out of some more games to at least pad his already staggering record of tosses.

The Braves are an older team, but they have some young players that could step in and be competitive in the coin-flip that is the NL East. They will most likely lose Mark Teixeira at the end of the season if they don’t try to trade him. Tom Glavine and John Smoltz are mostly likely going to the Hall in five years and I don’t know how many more seasons Bobby Cox has left in him.

It would be great to see Chipper Jones on a contender again. He was like Derek Jeter in his earlier days, always in the post-season and doing things to win games. If the Braves aren’t a contender within two seasons, look for Jones to either go somewhere else to win or the Braves may have to deal him to build for the future.

If Chipper ends up batting .400 this season, imagine the effect he would have on my baseball card collection?!