Friday, July 27, 2007

Phillies - Utley = no playoffs

Only a few hours after I postulated that Chase Utley had a 10% chance to break Webb's doubles record, he gets hit by a pitch and breaks his hand. So that record is obviously out the window. Dan Uggla and Magglio Ordonez both have 38 doubles which puts them at a much lower chance, maybe 1%.

On a more concering issues, especially here in Philly, is what will the team do without Utley. It seems from the reports I've heard that best case scenario puts Utley out about 3 weeks. If that happens AND Utley returns to his pre-injury form, then the injury probably only cost the Phillies about 1.5-2 games (I'm completely pulling these numbers out of my ass by the way). Of course, last season they missed the playoffs by 2 games, so that amount is significant.

More realistically, he'll probably miss 4-5 weeks. Remember when the Phillies told us how quickly Brett Myers would return from his injury? And while they're not eliminated from the playoffs, the rest of the team needs to play much better than they have been to make a serious run.

Additionally, the loss of Utley may affect Rollins in his quest for the AB and PA records. Without Utley's bat, he'll get fewer chances, plus Charlie Manuel may move him from the leadoff spot to the 3rd spot (that is pure speculation on my part, I have no evidence of this).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, this is a huge blow. Utley was easily the best 2B in baseball. Probably the biggest gap of any position... They're saying 4-6 weeks after the surgery, but even that seems optimistic-- especially if you include time to get back the hand strength. Surprisingly the prediction markets show no dropoff in their chance to win the division.