“But, Mr. Amaro, Utley Is Clearly Hemorrhaging… I Mean, He’s Covered In Blood And -” “No, No Chase Is Fine, We’re Monitoring It. He’s Ready To Go.”
You may recall, Phillies fans, that Chase Utley had the best start of his young career this season. He even arguably had the best opening of the 2008 season in baseball. He led the MLB in homers in April (11), including a five-game homer streak, and batted .360. He earned National League Player of the Month honors from the league. In May he hit 8 more home runs and broke the club record for homers before June. Into the next month, he went on ANOTHER five-game homer streak from May 25-June 2. At the time he lead all of baseball in home runs and the NL in RBI. He was part of an absolute demolishing of St. Louis on June 13th as he, Ryan Howard, and Pat Burrell hit three home runs in a row en route to a 20-2 win. He was a shoe-in for the All-Star game. The Sports World was calling a three-peat of Phillies MVPs. All was good.
The next day, he began an 0-for-24 hitless streak, and would go on to bat 1-for-29 overall during the slump and was benched on the 21st, ending a 101-game starting streak. The rest of the season, he was never quite… Utley. He played well, great even at times. But not Utley. So people started to ask if he was hurt. There was abstract whispering of a possible hip problem of sorts. And the team denied it. And Chase, as expected, gave us little to nothing on the subject. Even last week, according to Todd Zolecki, management was mum about it, quoting Ruben Amaro Jr. as saying he was “monitoring it.” Well, mystery now solved. Zolecki has reported that Utley will have hip surgery and will miss, brace yourselves, 4 to 6 months. So that’s that. But it gets even more exciting, as Utley’s neighbor 90 feet to the right is going to have back surgery. Pedro though, is only expected to need 8-12 weeks to recover. But yikes, you don’t want to enter a season defending a World Championship missing two starting infielders. Endeared as they have become, Dobbs and Bruntlett shoring up the right side and middle sits a little uneasy. But hey, it’s only November and they’re still World-Fucking-Champions.
ZoZoZone: Utley to Have Hip Surgery, Out 4 to 6 Months
November 20th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Day after the City approves building higher than Billy Penn . . . . .
November 20th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Utley’s hip injury was not a mystery. Back in July the guy couldn’t deny he was playing through an injury and keep a straight face.
November 21st, 2008 at 10:40 am
@john..
stuff it. still champs.