Let Utley Play

In a previous post, credit was given to the Phillies for letting Utley play full time. Since then, it appears he is still stuck in a straight platoon situation with Polanco. This is quite obvious when Thomas Perez gets the nod at first the last couple of nights while Thome recovers, rather than have Utley play. Not to knock Perez, but he's the Phillies true utility guy, as opposed to Placido "Super Utility" Polanco. Perez's seaonal average (if you assume 162 games) is 6HR / 40RBI / .247, so he's not exactly going to light the world on fire with his bat. Now that Ryan "the Bull Part 2" Howard is up, he should take the lion's share of time at first while Thome is down. And, Howard is an exciting guy to watch, I can't wait to see him hit a few out in batting practice this Friday at Wrigley. Yes, still stuck in Chicago, at least the weather is starting to get better.

Back to Utley. Not to sound like a broken record, but why isn't Polanco taking at bats away from David Bell who is hitting a meager .217? If you break it down, the kid they refered to as the next Jeff Kent is really starting to look like Jeff Kent. For the sake of argument, let's extrapolate Utley's numbers supposing he had the same total at bats as Kent 55 vs. 94. That would look something like this:

Chase Utley 5HR / 15BI / .327
Jeff Kent 6HR / 21BI / .319

Pretty similar numbers wouldn't you say? Of course there is the argument that Chase only faces right handers and his career numbers against lefties isn't so great. Well, how do we know for sure, he has only 57 at bats against lefties in his entire major league career. With Bell's hitting in the dumps, could Utley be any worse than him right now? To further the comparison of Utley and Kent, let's look at their seasonal averages (based on 162 games played), the totals would look like this:

Chase Ultey 19HR / 91BI / .265
Jeff Kent 28HR / 110BI / .290

Still a little way to go to be as productive as Kent, but not far off. In fact, Kent's first full season in 1993 with the Mets yielded a 21HR/ 80BI / .270 campaign, very similar numbers, heck, almost identical.

So given this, let's play arm-chair manager for a moment and give Utley a chance to play everyday and show us what he is capable of. In fact, let's set the infield as Howard/Utley/Rollins/Polanco and see how it goes. All of these guys are very productive hitters and quite capable defenders. If Howard struggles, move Utley over to First, Polanco to Second and Bell to Third. It's all about keeping the most productive hitters in the lineup for the greatest number of at bats, and hitters are more productive when they have a regular role.

We have to at least find out, don't we?