The Man - Chase Utley

Chase Utley had plenty of broadcasters call his games during his 13 year career in Philadelphia. Two lines in particular stick with me.* In a 2006 game he was stealing 3^rd when Ryan Howard hit a chopper to the right side. He ran through the bag and sprinted for home and beat the throw with a feet first slide. Harry Kalas was astounded at this, as were the rest of us, as he exclaimed “Chase Utley you are The Man!”

That nickname stuck, with good reason. It was the kind of heads up hustle play that defined Chase Utley’s run as the greatest 2^nd baseman in Phillies’ franchise history. He had a knack for situational baseball that was innate. Chase knew what to do, when to do it, and how to do it better than anybody on the Phillies during their incredible streak to end the first decade of the century.

“Short, compact.”

That’s the other line that sticks in my head most about Chase Utley. Our old friend Gary “Sarge” Matthews liked to describe Utley’s powerful swing this way whenever he’d rip a ball in the gap or send one deep into the right field seats. My god was that swing a thing of beauty. I can’t recall watching anybody who had quicker or more powerful wrists than Chase. He would just turn on a ball and send lasers all over the diamond with remarkable consistency. He was a line drive hitter and that swing would go through the zone and have that signature abrupt follow through that almost recoiled after he’d make his contact. It truly was a thing of beauty that Philadelphia fans did not take for granted.

Utley was traded to the Dodgers today in an effort to give him another shot at winning it all while making room for younger players for the Phillies. So if you’ll just allow me to wax poetic for a bit..

I can remember very early on in his career catching a game at the Vet, so this had to be his rookie year of 2003. He still hadn’t quite broken through to playing every day and fans were growing antsy because they could see the talent. The Phils already had a pretty stellar 2^nd baseman in Placido Polanco but Chase was not to be denied. I don’t remember the exact details of the game but Utley played and had an outstanding game and my father and I had sports radio on waiting our turn to get out of the damn parking lot. Every single call-in was more of the same. When are they going to play Utley every day? They have to start playing Utley every day! What the bleep is Bowa doing he’s gotta play Utley every day!

Well, by 2005 Chase was the every  day 2^nd baseman and his 5 year run from 2005-2009 was arguably the best 5 year stretch put together by a 2^nd baseman in the history of the game. I know WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is a tough stat to digest conceptually but it does generally list the best players in the game at the top of its rankings. Here is a list, and it’s a list that is actually unfair to Utley. I looked at the best 2^nd baseman in the past 30 years by WAR and cumulated their top 5 seasons to see how Utley stacked up. The reason this isn’t quite fair to Chase is because his top 5 seasons all happened consecutively. The only other guy on this list to have his top 5 seasons come consecutively was Craig Biggio, anyway here’s how Chase stacks up.

Chase Utley	Robinson Cano	Ryne Sandberg	Roberto Alomar	Craig Biggio	Dustin Pedroia	Jeff Kent
7.2	8.4	8.5	7.4	6.3	7.9	7.2
7.3	8.1	7.8	7.3	5.5	6.9	7
7.8	7.8	7.1	6.6	9.4	6.3	5.2
9	6.7	7	6.1	6.5	5.6	4.4
8.2	6.4	6.1	5.6	5.1	5.1	4.1
39.5	37.4	36.5	33	32.8	31.8	27.9

So yeah, Utley was easily the best in the game at 2^nd base for the second half of the Aughts. In fact, the only player who racked up more WAR in the same 2005-2009 timeframe was Albert Pujols (44.4). Chase Utley was the 2^nd best baseball player in the Majors for that 5 year run and there’s not much of an argument against it. Also, for comparison sake, Ryan Howard’s 58 home run campaign in 2006 only warranted 5.2 WAR. This stat takes your defense into serious consideration obviously.

If we want to get technical, Rogers Hornsby, who once called Jimmy Dugan a talking pile of pig shit, was statistically the best 2^nd baseman of all time. But he was playing when we still called World War I the The Great War.

The numbers are staggering for a second baseman. Five consecutive seasons over 20 HRs (3 of those were over 30), 4 consecutive seasons over 100 runs, 5 consecutive seasons over 100 RBI, and remarkably he is the all-time leader in stolen base percentage averaging 15 steals a season for his career.

But numbers tell maybe half the story of Chase Utley. 

In 2007, Utley was on his way to the MVP award when John Lannan broke his hand with a fastball. He missed a month in the second half of the season and this allowed Jimmy Rollins to step in and take the award. What I remember about this though was making it to the campus bar at Temple the night Utley returned from that injury. The Man went 4-4 the night he came back and we were all FREAKING OUT.** That’s the kind of stuff we’re talking about when we talk about Chase, his sense of the moment and owning that moment. From there the Phils took off and embarrassed the Mets to take the division. Howard won the MVP in ‘06, Rollins got it in ‘07, but the entire time we always knew that Chase Utley was the best player on the team. He was smart, he was clutch, and he did it with such a stoic no nonsense nose to the grindstone attitude you couldn’t help but think Chase Utley was basically the coolest guy alive. It didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eyes for the ladies either.

I’ve talked about this one before but it bears repeating. In the second half of the clinching game of the 2008 World Series he made the quintessential Chase Utley play to preserve a tie game and get out of a dangerous jam. With 2 outs and the game tied 3-3 with man on 2^nd for the Rays a ball was hit up the middle and Utley got to it with little to no shot to get the runner at first. Still, he faked the throw to first and fooled the guy who was rounding 3^rd at the time and the runner decided to head home. With the ball still in his hands Utley had the runner by a country mile and was able to almost lob the ball into Chooch to tag out what would have been the go ahead run. Maybe some other guys make the same play, but Chase Utley makes that play 8 days a week, inning over, and the Philadelphia Phillies are your World Champions of Baseball. Goosebumps.

Of course, he went ahead and pushed his cool up another few notches, as if it were possible, with his proclamation in Citizen’s Bank Park the day of the victory parade. I’ll let this video do the talking here.

Then, in 2009, still at the peak of his powers, he went full Reggie Jackson on us in the World Series against the Yankees. I can remember the stat now, he was the first left handed batter to hit two home runs off a left handed pitcher in a World Series game since Babe Ruth. Remarkable. He did that in Game 1 off CC Sabathia and that was probably the last truly great "we're gonna win this whole thing" moment for the near dynasty of the Utley era Phillies. His 5 homers in that series are tied with Jackson for the most ever in a World Series.

From there his health failed. Namely his knees. He missed significant portions of the next three seasons including essentially the first half of 2011 and 2012. He rebounded some in 2013 but things for Utley and the Phils were never the same. His peak was incredibly high, but like many players and the team in general, the run was cut a bit shorter than we all thought it should be. But I’m not here to remember the lean times.

I'm here to remember Chase Utley for being Brian Dawkins and Allen Iverson rolled in one, except he won a Championship. I will remember Chase Utley for that short, compact swing. I will remember him for being out by a step on any ground ball he ever hit to second base. I will remember him beating out double play balls because he willed beating out double play balls. I will remember him hustling and running harder than anybody else did because for him there was no other way. I will remember the way he put his head down and sprinted on every pop-up, knowing he was cursing at himself. I will remember the ease with which he flipped balls out of his glove to Ryan Howard. I will remember the greased back hair, the dry sense of humor, the power, the incredible instincts, the ability to come through more often than not, and perhaps most of all I will remember him for being a winner.

Thank you, Chase. For everything.

*I have to admit I’m tearing up as I write this.
**Tried to rely on just memory for this but on further review he went 3-5 and the Phils beat the Mets 9-2 in late August. Few drinks that night I'm sure.