Chase Utley is on the Hall of Fame ballot for the second time. He was on 28.8% of the ballots last year. Not bad for the first time and he’ll likely build on that.
He played 16 seasons and played in 1937 games. He hit .275/.358/.465 with 259 home runs and 154 stolen bases. He also led the league in hit-by-pitch three seasons in a row (getting plunked 76 times in those three years) and runs scored once.
He received MVP votes five times (finishing as high as fifth), made six All-Star teams, and won four Silver Slugger Awards. He also owns a World Series ring (he played on teams that made the WS three times).
Chase played second base, an underrepresented position in the Hall (mostly because if a middle infielder has a good arm, he’s a shortstop).
He didn’t win any Gold Gloves, but he was the best defensive second baseman in the NL for several years.
On the negative side, he broke Ruben Tejada’s leg on a slide into second, trying to break up a double play. He got a two-game suspension for the play. In the ‘good old days’, that’s how you played the game, but this wasn’t the ‘good old days’.
He finished with a 64.5 bWAR and had a run of five seasons with bWARs over 7 (peaking at 9.0). He had a ten-year streak of bWARs over 3. But in his last four seasons, he totalled just a 2.3 bWAR. His peak was terrific, but it didn’t last long enough to build the bulk numbers that the Voters liked.
If his peak lasted just a little longer, if he could have gotten that extra 115 hits to get to 2000, if Gold Glove voters had given him a couple of Gold Gloves, I don’t think there would be any doubt that he’d get into the Hall.
But then, our job isn’t to guess if the Writers will vote him in. Our job is to decide if we would put him into the Hall.
Utley’s stats are here.
tats are here.