A South Floridian's Case for Chase

Growing up in South Florida, my formative memories in the late-oughts/early 2010s as a then-Florida Marlins fan were that of the Philadelphia Phillies being an absolute powerhouse. From a period of 2007-2011, the club captured five consecutive NL East crowns, won consecutive pennants in 2008 and 2009, as well as the 2008 World Series.

Simply put, adolescent me hated the Phillies with a fervor. With the passage of time, though, I'm able to digest that era through a more objective lens.

Those great Phillies teams, constructed with the help of Pat Gillick and Ruben Amaro Jr., were rife with marquee players of the likes of Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Cole Hamels, Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth. Then came future Hall of Famer Roy Halladay, diverting even more of my attention towards them.

However, Halladay's plaque shouldn't stand as the lone Cooperstown acknowledgement of that special group. One piece of their winning core always seemed to stick out more than the rest: second baseman Chase Utley.

He's a polarizing player. Sabermetricians are rather pro-Utley. On the other end of the spectrum, traditionalists can and will find their fair share of reasons as to why his career appears insufficient. I feel Utley has among the more compelling Hall of Fame cases in recent memory.

At His Peak

When Utley was at his best, not only was he among the best players in baseball—let alone his own team—but among the greatest second basemen the game had yet seen.

Between 2005-2010, the Pasadena native put up 45.5 WAR, according to Baseball-Reference. Among all players in this stretch, only Albert Pujols (52.1) proved more valuable than Utley. Peak Utley outperformed the likes of Álex Rodríguez (38.3), Joe Mauer (31.8), David Wright (30.0) Matt Holliday (29.2), Ádrian Beltré (29.0), and Carlos Beltrán (27.8), all of whom have compelling cases of their own.

How did Utley usurp all of these superstar players? He separated himself thanks to the well-rounded nature of his game, accumulating value by being adept at each skill that one and many a contemporary of his may have lacked.

From 2005-2010, Utley hit 162 home runs, a modest 18th in that stretch, but still nearly as many as Vladimir Guerrero (163), Manny Ramirez (165), Jim Thome (166), and the aforementioned Holliday (166). However, none of them played their respective defensive positions to the degree of Utley, whose 119 defensive runs saved led all of baseball over this span. Defense is only one piece of the puzzle, though one that largely gets underrated when assessing the worth of players past and present.

Let us shift the conversation back to the batter's box.

While Utley only hit 162 homers throughout this six-season peak, the combination of his ability to hit for doubles power (216 2B), better-than-average eye (10.2 BB%), and knack for hit by pitches (117) helped him total 170 batting runs (Rbat). For context, that's seven more than teammate Ryan Howard, who hit 89 more home runs than Utley (and more than any other MLB player).

This leads us to another underappreciated aspect of his game: baserunning.

Utley's 90 stolen bases in this stretch came in just 102 attempts. The 28th-highest total in the league was enough to rank eighth-best in Runs from Baserunning (Rbaser) thanks to a success rate of 88.06%.

Using the metric WAR7, which accounts for a player's seven best seasons, Utley's 49.3 puts him ninth all-time among second basemen. That's better than Hall of Famers Ryne Sandberg, Joe Gordon, Frankie Frisch, Roberto Alomar, Craig Biggio, Billy Herman, Nellie Fox, Bobby Doerr, Tony Lazzeri, Johnny Evers, Red Schoendienst, Bid McPhee, Bill Mazeroski, and Miller Huggins.

"Where It Matters Most"

It's one thing to be the best player on your team, but to be the best player on a team that won five consecutive division titles is this to the second power. To many, what players do in the regular season—while important—pales in comparison to what they do on the big stages of postseason play.

Among players with at least 50 career postseason games, Utley's .364 on-base percentage ranks inside the top 25 all-time. In 15 career World Series games, though only hitting .200, he managed to slug .689 with a 1.046 OPS. In the 2009 WS that saw his Phillies fall to the Yankees in six games, Utley slashed a combined .286/.400/1.048/1.448 with 5 HR, 8 RBI, and 1 SB.

Drawbacks

As great as peak Utley was, his case for Cooperstown is not as slam-dunk as one would like.

Maybe the biggest statistical roadblock impeding Utley's path is his pedestrian hit total of 1,885. Purists would say, "You can't have less than 2,000 hits and somehow be in the Hall of Fame." Excluding Negro League players given the scant game log data, we see that of the 168 primary big league position players in the Hall, only 30 of them had fewer hits than Utley.

There's also the lack of accolades sitting on Utley's mantle. He was only a six-time All-Star, and despite his monstrous peak, Utley never won an MVP award. In his best season by WAR, a nine-win season in 2008 that stands among the 25 most valuable by a second baseman, Utley finished 14th in NL MVP voting. He never placed higher than seventh in any of the years he received votes.

Utley never won a Gold Glove, either. In that aforementioned 2008 season during which he led all big league defenders with 3.5 dWAR and 31 defensive runs saved, the Reds' Brandon Phillips received the award over him.

Shifting to baseball's notoriously vague "character clause," an assessment of Utley's career is simply incomplete without mentioning the infamous slide in Game 2 of the 2015 NLDS that took out Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada. The shortstop suffered a fractured fibula as a result. Utley would in turn be suspended for the following two games of the series, a suspension he appealed and ultimately had dropped the following year. MLB later implemented a rule ahead of the 2016 season outlining that "slides on potential double plays will require runners to make a bona fide attempt to reach and remain on the base."

For many, this dirty slide was enough to dub Utley a "bad guy" who doesn't represent the principles of the Hall of Fame. I deem it more as a blip on the résumé of a sterling career from an individual who's otherwise beloved across the sport.

Total Body of Work

For his career, Utley amassed 64.5 rWAR/61.6 fWAR. Per Baseball-Reference, this puts him 12th all-time among second basemen. There are 10 second basemen below him who are in the Hall of Fame.

By dWAR (defensive wins above replacement), Utley's 17.3 has him 11th at the position. When referring back to DRS, a metric introduced in 2003, only Mark Ellis has saved more runs at the position than Utley's 123. It's not all that dissimilar from Adrián Beltré, who is seen as a first-ballot lock thanks in part to his incredible glovework at third base.

Another name on the ballot whose case bares a resemblance to Utley's, Andruw Jones, has a reputation built on a combination of offense (111 OPS+ to Utley's 117), speed (152 SB to Utley's 154), and defense (24.4 to 17.3 dWAR).

Referring back to another old-school metric, RBI, we see that Utley is one of just eight 2B with at least four seasons of 100 or more runs driven in. Five of those eight players are in the Hall, the exceptions being Jeff Kent and Robinson Canó (likely be held out due to multiple failed PED tests).

We talked earlier about Utley's efficiencies as a base-stealer. His 87.5% success rate is the best all-time among hitters with at least 175 stolen base attempts, having stolen 154 bases to just 22 caught stealings.

And if all of this hasn't proved convincing enough yet, I'll leave you with this. Can you name the seven players in Major League history with at least 250 home runs, 100 fielding runs, and 150 steals? Answer: Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Mike Schmidt, Carl Yastrzemski, Mookie Betts, Andruw Jones, and, yep, you guessed it, Chase Utley.

Photo by Jason Arnold/Getty Images