Braves News World

With Mike Hampton unable to come back and John Foster nursing an injured elbow, the Braves needed another left-handed pitcher in their bullpen. Chuck James was called up from Triple-A Richmond Thursday to provide some much-needed relief from the left side. James started the year at Class A Myrtle Beach, progressed to Double-A Mississippi in and then ended the minor league season at Triple-A Richmond. He compiled a cumulative 13-7 record and 2.12 ERA during those 3 stints. Like fellow Braves rookies Blaine Boyer, Kyle Davies, Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann, James was raised in Atlanta. Jorge Vasquez was designated for assignment in order to make room for James on the 40-man roster.

Andruw Jones’ solo home run in the 8th inning of Wednesday night’s game reached 2 milestones for him. First, he became the first major leaguer to hit 50 round trippers in a season since Jim Thome and Alex Rodriguez accomplished the feat in 2002 (Barry Bonds was the last to reach that mark in the National League in 2001).

With his 300th career home run, Andruw became just the 12th player in Major League history to reach that milestone before his 30th birthday. Jones turned 28 years old in April and is the youngest Brave to reach the 300-homer mark (Eddie Mathews 42 days older when he hit his 300th home run). The other players who have reached 300 homers by age 30 are: Hank Aaron, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews, Harmon Killebrew, Mel Ott, Frank Robinson, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Juan Gonzalez and Vladimir Guerrero.

Braves MVP candidate Andruw Jones was named the Bank of America National League Player of the Week on Monday for the week of September 5-11. During the week he batted .381 with 5 home runs, 7 runs scored, and 10 runs batted in. Last week he also tied for the league lead with 24 total bases and led the league in slugging percentage with a 1.143 mark.

Through September 11th, he led the NL in home runs (49) and RBIs (121) and was also registering career highs in slugging percentage (.612) and OPS (.972). In conjunction with the award Bank of America will make a $1,000 donation to the Little League Urban Initiative on behalf of Andruw.