Matt Hoover
There are some things in
the world that give me so much joy that I can’t really explain to you how much
I like them. I’d normally give you a drawn out list of examples of these things
right now, but I’m trying to keep this thing short. You’ll recall the monstrously
long Tim Duncan thing I posted last week. If anyone has finished reading that
yet, I’d like to take up just another minute of your time and apologize for the
length there. But anyway, yeah… I like some things a lot. Chase Utley is one of
them. I’m going to talk about why and just how good Utley was/is (but mostly
was).
As a perennial
Philadelphia Phillies fan, it hardly seems appropriate or possible for me to
attempt to place Chase Utley’s career into context in an unbiased way. I’m a
giant Chase Utley fan. The late, great Harry Kalas was right; Chase Utley is
the man. Not only is he the greatest second baseman I have ever seen play
baseball, but also he could beat the shit out of everybody that you love. Keep
that in mind going forward. He is also the perennial hit-by-pitch king of
baseball, and has the all time best stolen base success rate in the history of
Major League Baseball. The dude is a “straight G,” as the kids say. But yes. I
have a pro-Utley bias. I still don’t think anything I’m about to say is
unwarranted, though.
 |
| A few years ago when Jason Werth was still a Phillie, there was a rumor that Chase Utley's wife was having an affair with Werth. I'm pretty sure it ended up being false, but I was really hoping that it would end up being true just so I could have seen Utley beat every last ounce of shit out of that long haired, poor fielding punk. |
In his peak, Chase
Utley, along with Joe Morgan and Jackie Robinson, was one of the three best
second basemen to play his entire career in the live ball era (1920 onward).
Utley’s bad knees cost us an opportunity to witness a career that could have
been literally one of the greatest ever in Major League Baseball. These may
seem like absurd claims, but I have two ways of basking them up. The first way involves
me going on and on comparing Utley’s yearly statistics with various hall of
fame second basemen, but no one wants to read that. Instead, I’m going to
choose option number two: talking about wins above replacement, or WAR. I’m
strongly pro sabermetrics; if you’re not on the sabermetrics bandwagon yet, it
may interest you to know that science has recently proven that the Earth is, in
fact, not flat. GET WITH THE TIMES, MAN! My purpose here isn’t to explain or argue
about sabermetrics with you, though, but if you want to know more about them,
start here.
Firstly, some stats on
Utley. During the five seasons from 2005 to 2009, Utley accumulated a WAR of
38.8. That’s an average of about 7.7 WAR per season. Utley peaked in 2008 with
an 8.8 WAR. That all sounds nice, but what does it mean? The only player in all
of baseball that accumulated a higher WAR than Utley during this five-year
period was Albert Pujols, who also happens to be considered by almost everyone
that knows anything about baseball the best position player of the last decade.
The WAR gap between Pujols (43.1) and Utley (38.8) is small, but the gap
between Utley and Alex Rodriguez (32.7), number three on the list, is a bit larger.
The gap between Utley and Brian Roberts (23.7), the next second basemen on the
list, is immense. Utley was easily the best second baseman in baseball and was
probably one of the two best players during the five-year period from 2005 to
2009. Other stats point to all of this being true as well; I only focus on WAR
because it’s all encompassing and fairly easy to understand.
Clearly, Utley was one
of the most dominant players in the game during his prime, but how does his
prime compare to those of the great second basemen of MLB’s past? In short,
very, very well. The primes of the twelve hall of fame live ball era second
basemen ranged from two years to seven years. The only two players that
averaged a higher WAR than Utley during their primes were Joe Morgan and Jackie
Robinson. At his best, Utley was better than players like Ryne Sandberg and
Charlie Gehringer. Certainly nothing to sneeze at.
Utley’s prime is as
good as or better than an average hall of fame live ball era second basemen.
Where his hall of fame resume suffers is longevity. As I mentioned before, his
knees continue to hamper him from becoming one of the all time greats. This
tragedy stings me whenever I begin to dwell upon it, but it’s tough to complain
too much about Utley, seeing as I was still given the opportunity to enjoy the
primes of one of the best players in the league at the time. We currently may
be witnessing the rise of a second baseman who could become one of the all time
greats in Robinson Cano (Apologies Red Sox people; Pedroia isn’t as good.), but
it is too early in Cano’s career to know this for sure. As for the man, though,
it will be interesting to see whether his fantastic prime will be enough to
propel him all the way to Cooperstown when the time comes. Crazier things have
happened. My heart tells me that he has a case, but my head is less sure. Maybe
if he can put a few more solid years together, my head will change its mind.
Statistics from Baseball-Reference.
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