Injuries could help Chipper's quest for .400

Chipper Jones is fighting a torn quadriceps muscle that has turned him into baseball's top pinch-hitter and might put him on the disabled list.

That's bad news for the Atlanta Braves. That's good news for baseball.

A nagging injury that limits Jones' plate appearances is just what baseball needs for an interesting summer. Limited at-bats could keep Jones in the hunt for .400.

The 30-game winner is impossible, and home run milestones now mean nothing. But baseball still has a great white whale.

The .400 season. Not since Ted Williams 67 years ago has a batter finished a season at .400 or better. Only four times since has anyone even come close.

But Jones is in the ballpark. Two games past the season's halfway point, the 36-year-old third baseman is batting .394.

A .400 threat would electrify baseball like the great home run derby of 1998, only this one has little chance of invalidation. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were steroid confidence men, but baseball's power surge, which really is 20 years old, has had no measurable effect on batting average.

A .400 season would be the real deal, and a .400 charge would put baseball on the front burner even in football-mad September.

Chipper Jones' bum quad will only help.

A .400 season is almost impossible for hitters with a ton of at-bats. Counting Williams in 1941, five players have hit .380 or better in a season. Only one had as many as 500 at-bats.

Rod Carew in 1977 hit .388 with 616 at-bats. That's a season for the ages, as you will see. Here are the other four flirtations with .400:

-- 1994: Tony Gwynn hit .394 in 419 at-bats, in a season ended in August by the players' strike.

-- 1980: George Brett hit .390 in 449 at-bats, in a season in which he missed 45 games, mostly because of injury.

-- 1957: Williams hit .388 in 420 at-bats, a season in which he missed 22 games and walked 119 times.

-- 1941: Williams hit .406 in 456 at-bats, a season in which he walked more than once a game (147 in 143 games).

Those numbers are in line with Jones, who is on pace for 490 or so at-bats, and that pace figures to drop if he goes on the DL and misses the next two weeks, as the Braves fear. Players need just 501 plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, and Jones already has 303, so he could miss six weeks and still likely get enough bats to qualify.

Two of the more impressive averages this decade -- Barry Bonds' .370 in 2002 and .362 in 2004 -- came in limited at-bats; 403 and 373, because Bonds walked so much.

The evidence seems clear. The more at-bats, the less likely a guy can challenge .400, which consists of parts talent and luck.

Don't believe the luck? Check out the fluctuation of Gwynn's batting average from 1986-89: .329, .370, .313, .336. Was Gwynn that much better a hitter in 1987 than just before or just after?

Heck, Chipper Jones' career proves there's no rhyme or reason to a monster batting average. Jones hit .327 in 2002. Then .305 in 2003. Then .248, .296, .324 and .337. Injuries, ballparks, age, all kinds of things factor in, but truth is, a batting average sways much more than power numbers.

A big average isn't really the result of a game-wide trend in any particular year. Of those five big years since 1940, no player hit within 23 points of the .400 challenger. Brett in 1980 batted 38 points higher than the nearest big leaguer. Williams was 47 points ahead in 1941. Carew was 50 points ahead in 1977.

Jones is in that company. He's 29 points ahead of Lance Berkman, who is hitting .365.

Hitting .400 is harder than hard. Heck, only 29 major-leaguers are batting at least .300. That's one per team.

And yet Chipper Jones has a chance at .400. Put your feet up, Chipper, and rest a spell. Then get ready to give us a great ride.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)