High Hopes: A Phillies Podcast - Chase Utley Is A Hall of Famer | WIP Daily

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

Joe Giglio breaks down the case for Chase Utley getting enshrined in Cooperstown. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whether the action is at the link or the bank, there's never an off day on Broad Street. It's the biggest news of the day, every day, with takes from someone who's never short on them. It's WIP Daily with Joe Giglio. Welcome on in, WIP Daily, Joe Giglio with you. Appreciate everyone listening, subscribing, following the podcast. Hope everyone out there had a very, very Merry Christmas and a great New Year to come here

and appreciate everyone making this podcast, which we started last April right for the NFL Draft, a part of your daily fix and listening to it, it's been a success and I appreciate that. I certainly do that you take the time to listen and to make this show and to make my thoughts and to make our community here at WIP a part of what you do as a fan. So really, truly appreciate it. years, and that is the place of a player like Chase Utley, and I won't forget Jimmy

Rollins. We'll get to an episode on him coming up soon, but Chase Utley's place on the Hall of Fame ballot and whether or not the former Philly second baseman belongs in the Hall of Fame. I think Utley's going to end up being a really fascinating case study in the Hall of Fame and the battle between the peak of a player versus the longevity of a player, counting stats versus advanced stats, the eye test versus maybe what the numbers say in a lot of areas. Let me start us off this way. I believe Chase Utley is a Hall of Famer. I believe Chase Utley will one day make the Hall of Fame. Now, will that be on this first ballot?

I doubt that. But I do believe before Chase Utley's run on the ballot is over, he's going to be a Hall of Fame. We're going to have buses of people traveling up from Philadelphia. And I can't wait to rile everyone up and get everyone on a bus trip from the Midday Show to go to Cooperstown for a Chase Utley induction into the Hall of Fame. I 1,000% believe Chase Utley is a Hall of Fame player, was a Hall of Fame player, and belongs in Cooper Center. Let's go through the debate. Let's go through his case. Let's go through the pros, the cons for Chase Utley here. Before we start off, and I just want to let you guys know, I'm recording this a little bit earlier than you hear it because of the holiday. So if you check it right now as you listen, the update's probably a little bit different than it is right now.

But as I sit here on this day and I look at the tracker, Ryan Thibodeau is a big baseball fan. He tracks public voting for the Hall of Fame. It's basically, you know, a local columnist, whoever puts out their ballot in a column or they just screenshot their ballot and they tweet it out or whatever, he counts them all. And he kind of tracks it as we go through the process. Now, one thing to remember, excuse me, and it's really critical, is a lot of voters don't make their ballots public in the process. Now, they may do it afterwards. They may not do it at all. So when you see the ballot percentage, that's just the people that are sharing, right? There's lots of voters that are sending their votes in and they're not sharing. As I sit here this morning and do this episode, Chase Utley currently is tracking at 60%

on 33 public ballots. There will be hundreds and hundreds of ballots. 33 are in already as I sit here, and he's on 60% of those. So, excuse me, there'll be probably estimated ballots, I think this would be close to 400, 380, something like that. So Utley's going to need, and anyone's going to need, about 280-something votes to make the Hall of Fame, 75%. Right now, Utley's tracking at 60%. While that is a wonderful number, early on in the process for Utley and his future of making the Hall of Fame, one thing that I've tracked this for a long time, I followed this tracker for a long time,

one thing I've noticed is the public votes are way more, you know, they'll vote anybody. They'll put a lot of people on their ballot. The public voting, the people who are willing to share their votes tend to be big Hall of Fame voters. They'll put seven, eight, nine, ten people on their ballot. The people that are not willing to share their Hall of Fame votes, more conservative, and they're less willing to vote for borderline candidates, and they don't want to share. My theory is they don't want to get ridiculed by the internet, so they don't tell anyone what they're doing until it's time to actually, you know,

the vote comes through. That being said, usually there's a little drop. If you get 60% on the public ballots, you know, maybe you get 50% or 45% on the non-public ballots. So while I think the 60% early on is a very nice number for Chase Utley, I think the chances of him making the Hall of Fame this year are not great. I doubt he's going to be at the 75% overall we see, but he's off to a good start without question. Now, in terms of the case, Chase Utley, look, I mean, there's a lot we could dive into in terms of why he's a Hall of Famer, but let's just go over some of the raw numbers from the start. Okay. 259 home runs, 1,025 runs batted in 1,100 hits, 1,100 runs, excuse me, 1,103 runs, 1,885 hits, a slash line of 275, 358, 465, an 823 OPS, a 117 OPS plus, 117 adjusted OPS. So I think if we just look at Chase Utley's raw stats,

the first instinct you would have, many would have, is nah, that's not quite a Hall of Famer. I mean, you don't see Hall of Famer. I think Duke Snyder might be the last Hall of Famer inducted with less than, or Gil Hodges, excuse me, 2,000 hits. I mean, they just don't put people in the Hall of Fame. Ralph Kiner, excuse me, 2,000 hits. I mean, they just don't put people in the Hall of Fame. Ralph Kiner, excuse me. Kiner in 75, I think it was,

was the last hitter inducted with less than 2,000 hits. So Chase Utley is a very interesting case study in peak versus the whole thing. Chase Utley's peak, especially when you factor in the guy who was a second baseman, is 1,000% Hall of Fame worthy. I can make a case, I will do it on this episode, that over a decade span, he is one of the top five players in the sport. He was

that for a decade span. And I believe that coupled with all the winning in Philadelphia, coupled with the position he played, which does not usually produce offense at the level he did. And a championship and the peak of excellence. That is a Hall of Fame player. That's the way I view a Hall of Fame player. Were you one of the best of your position for a good period of time? You know, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years. If you were, yes. I'm going to put you in. Now, if injury or decline quickly curtailed your career, am I going to hold that against you significantly? I'm not with Chase Utley. And I do really believe his peak was so great compared to his peers. And you throw in the second base thing that it's just very, very, very hard for me not to put him in. Let's start the position because I think that matters. Jay Sutley finished his career with a 64.5 war. That's 14th all-time among second basemen. And

it's better than 11 current Hall of Fame second basemen, including Jackie Robinson. It's very close to Ryan Sandberg, who had 67.9 war. Roberto Alomar, 67. Craig Biggio, 65.4. So the last three, you know, kind of top-notch second baseman in recent memory that we put in from the 80s, 90s into the 2000s. Sandberg, Alomar, Biggio. Utley's on their level. I mean, he is on their level. Whether or not you want to rank him four of that group, three, two, one, he's on their level. I would put Alomar as the best second baseman of that group. I would put Utley second. I would put probably Sandberg third and then Biggio, though I didn't love Sandberg as much as some people. He's obviously a good player, great player. I mean, he's a Hall of Famer, but Utley's in that mix. There's not like a gap

between Sandberg, Alomar, Biggio, and Utley. There's not. And in fact, at his best, you can make a real case Utley was the best of all of them. So for that, that's our baseline now of second baseman we're putting in the Hall of Fame. He fits that bill. Okay?

And how about this? Let's go to what he did at his best here. Okay? At his best. From 2005 to 2014, that is a 10-year span. Okay? The highest war in baseball was Albert Pujols, and I think we could all agree Albert Pujols had that run. He was the best player in all baseball. Utley, in that span, his war was 62, okay? 62, and Pujols' was, excuse me,

1962 and Pujols was, excuse me, his war was 59.7 in that span, trailing only Pujols. So Pujols, number one for a decade, 05 to 14, best player in baseball. Number two in that span was Chase Utley, 59.7 war. Okay. And if you go to 2014, so let's say, let's do it say 2004, excuse me, let's take it back one extra year. 04 to 14, an 11-year span of baseball. He ranked third. Third in all players in Major League Baseball in wins above replacement. Number one, Albert Pujols, number two, Adrian Beltre, who obviously is on this ballot with Chase Utley this year,

and he will be a Hall of Famer. I think there's no reason not to vote for Beltre, because Beltre has all these good things. Utley has, and he had ridiculous longevity and counting stats. But that aside, Pujols and Beltre, one and two. Utley, three. Number four, Miguel Cabrera. Number five, Alex Rodriguez.

If you take away the Rodriguez steroid stuff, and you just say, point blank, period, Joe, those other four guys, what are they? Pujols, Beltre, Cabrera, Rodriguez. What do you say? You say they're all Hall of Famers. Utley's right there with them. He was in that class for a very long period of time. And then if you want to go to an even smaller period, his best five years, because we just did 10 or 11 years, which is a very long period of time, and he was in that time one of the five best players in baseball. How about his monster peak? I'm going to pull it up right now. 05, which is

really when he established himself through 2010. That is a six year peak. He averaged in there 7.6 war. Okay. Here are his average numbers altogether during that period. 298 batting average, 388 on base, 523 slugging, 911 OPS, a 133 adjusted OPS. The heartbeat of a National League monster in the Phillies from 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10. Zero losing records, four playoff appearance in that span. I mean, a World Series,

going back to the World Series, what he did in the 2009 World Series, which was off the charts, the defensive play he made in the 2008 World Series, which I believe defines him and his career, and the kind of heads-up, headsy, smart player he was. It's incredible. I mean, we may never see a second baseman reel off a six-year stretch ever again with a 9-11 OPS and 162 home runs. The guy averaged, averaged 27 homers, 95 ribbies a year

from the second base spot over a six-year span in his prime. That's a Hall of Famer to me. That is a Hall of Famer in totality. A World Series champ, a six-time All-Star, a four-time Silver Slugger, 64.5 war, 1,885 hits, 259 on the homers, 1,025 on the ribbies, you know, five home runs in the 2009 World Series. I mean, these are monster, monster numbers. Now, I understand it fell off, and it fell off fast. You know, we know what happened with the knees and the player he was. This has happened at second baseman.

It's just why a lot of them aren't in the Hall of Fame, and we kind of forget about them. And I recognize it. You know, from, let's just say, starting in 2011 until 2018, the final eight of his career, he was an average offensive player. He just was. He had a total of 82 home runs in an eight-year span. He went from the monster I just said to 10 homers, 47 runs batted

in a year, average offensive player. He basically hung on just to get to 18, almost 1,900 hits. It wasn't a stellar ending to his career. If we take his career and end it in 2011, let's just say it just walks away then, his adjusted OPS plus is 129. His OPS is nearly 900. It fell below 825. That's what happened to him. It happens to a lot of players. But I prefer to look at the peak. I prefer to look at the World Series moments. I prefer to look at what he did. And it's just a dominant player in his time, a dominant, dominant player for a decade in Major League Baseball. For a six-year span, you could say he was a top two player

in Major League Baseball. And one other thing I want to throw in there, because I do think this stuff matters. Awards matter. Accolades matter. Moments matter. He has the moments. He has the World Series. He shined on the big stage in 2009. All-Star Games matter, but hardware also matters as well with Chase Utley.

And quite frankly, he didn't have a lot of that. He never finished top five in an MVP, which will hurt his case here. But I will say this, if you go back and we've had a certainly a renaissance or rethinking of the MVP award the last eight to 10 years compared to, we were still living in the stone ages during, you know, let's say the oddly Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins era in terms of how they awarded the vote. I believe he's one of the best players to never truly get close to an MVP. And it's kind of crazy when you go back and look at it, because if you if you put together the way voters vote now and how they look at statistics and value now, he would have won an MVP. Let's just go back to 2000 and let's say 2006.

I'm going to look at the voting for 2006. That's the year, of course, that Ryan Howard won the award. If we look at war, wins above replacement in 2006. Ryan Howard wins the award. He had a 5.2 war. Not taking anything away from Ryan Howard. Pujols, eight and a half war. He had a 5.2 war. Not taking anything away from Ryan Howard. Pujols, 8.5 war. He finished second. If we go by wins above replacement, which I think now

dictates more of the award voting, Utley finished third that year in wins above replacement. He finished seventh in the National League MVP vote. Let's go to 08. Let's go to the next year. Of course, we know Jimmy Rollins won the award. I'll get to Rollins and his potential to make the Hall of Fame coming up on an episode soon.

The number one guy in the National League in war that year was Albert Pujols. He finished ninth in voting. David Wright was second. He finished fourth in voting. Utley, third. He finished eighth in voting. Okay, so that maybe would have been another top three finish. In 2000 and let's go to 2000.

I guess that was seven. I was talking about seven was the Jimmy Rollins year, of course. Let's go to 2008 quickly. 2008 award voting in the National League. The winner was Albert Pujols. 9.2 war. Obviously very well deserved. Pujols was incredible.

Finishing second in the voting. The voting in 2008 was Ryan Howard. He had a 1.8 war, most of his defensive base running. We understand what his limitations were. He had a great year, 48 homers, 106, 46 runs batted in. I get it. But if we look at war, second that year, and nipping on the heels, I mean right there behind Pujols was Chase Utley.

That's a top three. That's a top three. That's a top two in back-to-back-to-back years. So I think it's a different story in a different era. Actually, the voters now today will appreciate at least career more than the award voters did in the moment. I believe he's one of the greatest second basemen of all time.

He's a champion, heartbeat of a champion, for a decade one of the best players in baseball. And you look at his numbers compared to Hall of Fame second baseman, they check out. You could take his 1,885 hits and say, Joe, that's not enough. And I say, go back and think about what you thought of him in the moment.

The guy was a Hall of Fame player. Chase Utley has my vote. I believe we'll take buses from Philadelphia, the midday show. We'll get a whole bunch of listeners. And we're going up to Cooperstown one day. Not this year, but one day he will get in. I believe

Chase Elliott deserves a spot in Cooperstown. I appreciate everyone listening, subscribing, following WIP Daily. Have a great holiday season. We'll talk soon.