Chipper Jones Snubbed on MLB All-Quarter Century Team

We have officially reached the quarter mark of the 21st Century. To celebrate, sports writers around the internet are releasing articles that name the best athletes of the last 25 years.

On Thursday, The Athletic's Jayson Stark and Tyler Kepner released their 40-man roster for an MLB All-Quarter Century Team.

The two long-time baseball insiders and fan votes were taken into account for the creation of The Athletic's quarter century baseball team. Yet, with all those opinions, Braves Country probably still feels like "they" got it wrong.

At least, maybe at third base because Atlanta Braves Hall of Famer Chipper Jones didn't make the team.

Instead of Jones, Adrián Beltré and Alex Rodriguez were The Athletic's selections at third base. However, those picks were not made without a heated discussion that involved Jones.

"We’ll be totally upfront on this. We werenotin agreement on this one. Guess who the prime suspect was who inspired that debate?"

Kepner argued for Rodriguez while Stark favored Jones.

"How can we not go with A-Rod as the backup third baseman? The voters came within 22 votes of electing him," Kepner wrote. "He hit 548 homers in the 2000s. He was the WAR leader at this position. And yeah, he had issues, but we have other performance-enhancing drug scoundrels on the team. Don’t we?"

Stark responded: "I recognize all of that. A-Rod was an awesome baseball player. But here’s another guy who was: Larry (Chipper) Jones. And I object to leaving Chipper off this team. Who was the only third baseman in the 2000s in the .300/.400/.500 Club? Chipper. He hit .364 and won a batting title — at age 36. He was still making All-Star teams and getting MVP votes at age 40. And he deserves to make this roster, over a two-time PED offender."

What's interesting to me is in the entire conversation, the pair of insiders didn't seem to consider including both Jones and Rodriguez and leaving off Beltré.

Beltré was greatly under-appreciated during his playing career, and I don't really want to add to that. He finished his career with a .286 average, .819 OPS, 477 home runs and 1,707 RBI.

Beltré also holds an edge over Jones and Rodriguez in this discussion because nearly his entire career took place this century (all but two seasons). Jones and Rodriguez made multiple All-Star appearances in the 1990s. Jones' only MVP award came during the 1999 season. Rodriguez's only batting title happened in 1996.

Those accomplished were presumably not considered for The Athletic's list.

Ultimately, it's a hard choice -- all three third basemen were terrific -- and it was great to hear Stark so strongly advocate for Jones' inclusion.

But it was disappointing to see him left off the team.