Braves 2009 Season in Review: Chipper Jones

This is going to be a short review of the 2009 season of Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones. Not because he doesn't deserve a lengthy review, but because it's hard to extrapolate what really happened to Chipper this year. Was it as bad as his 2004 season -- his lowest OPS+ season outside of his rookie year? Maybe. Chipper's OPS+ was one point higher this year (117) than it was in 2004 (116). What was startling about Chipper's '09 campaign was the decline in his power output. Chipper has a career .541 slugging percentage and in 2009 he posted the worst slugging percentage of his career at .430. That 111 point drop-off from his career number is eclipsed only by the 144 point drop-off from his 2008 slugging percentage of .574. What happened? Why did his power disappear? While I don't think anyone, even Chipper, definitively has the answer to that question, we can see the decline of his power throughout the year, and from that infer that perhaps the ri...