Chase Utley is one of the greatest Phillies ever, and he’s going to get hosed in the Hall of Fame vote

Chase Utley isn’t dead yet. He didn’t retire, and he didn’t get traded to the Maple Leafs. There’s still a chance that he can thrive with the Dodgers, play well in the postseason, and convince someone to give him a starting job next year. From there, he could play two, maybe three more years at a relatively high level. Players with his kind of career success have crawled out of deeper pits, so it seems like an odd time to write a hagiography about him.

On the other hand, I wanted to write about him, and this is a fine excuse.

Utley played with the Phillies in 13 different seasons, most of them remarkable in some way. Even more remarkable is how he always seemed to be the fourth fiddle on a team apparently filled with fiddles. Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins won MVPs. Cole Hamels was the easily identifiable ace, and then other aces showed up, two or three at a time in some cases. In the background, Utley was hitting a bases-clearing double somewhere, if he wasn’t sticking his elbow out and getting hit by a pitch.

Here, then, is the story of Chase Utley with the Phillies in two simple truths:

If you want to nerd it up a bit, here are the career WAR totals for the four homegrown Phillies.

Chase Utley: 62
Jimmy Rollins: 46
Cole Hamels: 43
Ryan Howard: 17

That’s the best evidence we have that Utley wasn’t just more valuable than his teammates, he was substantially more valuable.

You don’t like WAR? I get it. I have issues with packing every last scrap of baseball information into one number, too. It’s a 12-course tasting menu shoved in the same NutriBullet. But that’s still nutrition that will keep you alive in a barren landscape*, and there’s at least a chance you can taste the saffron. The reason WAR exists, though -- and why it’s gaining in popularity and acceptance -- is so we can appreciate the heck out of players like Chase Utley, who does everything well.

_{* Batting average is occasionally useful, mostly distasteful chicken fat. RBI is a bouquet of cilantro and poison oak.}

Think of what that means, a player who does everything well. Other than some notable throwing weirdness a few years ago, Utley was a nearly perfect player in his prime, and he had all five tools: hitting for average, hitting for power, fielding, running, and annoying the crap out of the other team. That last one isn’t included in WAR, so you can even give Utley bonus points if you want.

Utley had something of a weird career path, getting drafted in the middle of the first round in the 2000 draft and moving through the system slowly. He was never a blue-chip prospect, and he ranked in Baseball America’s top-100 prospects just once. It took him a while to break through in the majors because the Phillies were doing fine in the infield. They had Placido Polanco at second and David Bell at third, both solid players, and Utley wasn’t dominating the minor leagues nearly enough to make things uncomfortable.

When he finally got a chance to start for the big club without any competition, he was already 26. Madison Bumgarner just turned 26. Bryce Harper will be a year into his $500 million contract when he’s 26. For a baseball player, especially a future star, 26 is kind of late to get started.

Here’s what the Phillies did B.C.:

2002 - 80-81, 3rd place
2003 - 86-76, 3rd place
2004 - 86-76, 2nd place

The Phillies were the classic tweener team, with a healthy amount of talent and bright prospects for the future, but in desperate need of just one more great player. There are probably 10 teams like that around the league right now, teams missing something they have no idea they’re missing. In 2005, Utley emerged as a star and he enjoyed one of the better five-year stretches of any player of his generation. He was the missing piece, and he dragged the Phillies with him up the hill. Along with several other talented players, sure, but until Roy Halladay showed up, it shouldn’t have been a question who the most valuable Phillie was. Even if it often was.

If you take Rollins, Hamels, or Howard off the Phillies during the team’s extended run of success, the team is appreciably worse and unlikely to make the playoffs. So you can’t just give credit to Utley for the whole thing. He had to be a part of something bigger, just like every other great player.

It’s not a coincidence, though, that the fortunes of the Phillies rose with him. When Utley was at his best, so were the Phillies. That’s because a Gold Glove-caliber second baseman who hits 30 homers and runs well while playing with unimpeachable fundamentals tends to help his team win. You don’t need to prop your argument on WAR, though it’s there if you want it. Just think of the things that Utley wasn’t absolutely exceptional at. It’s about a two-part list, with the second part being “Making players on other teams like him.”

As in, he’s not getting into the Hall of Fame without a messy, protracted Internet fight. He’ll become eligible before a full changing of the BBWAA guard, with dozens and dozens of voters who don’t give a rip about WAR, possibly even writing one of those hilarious columns where they make up their own acronyms for baseball stats. And the argument against will be simple: Not good enough, and not for long enough.

It will make you so very mad.

There’s no reason to convince you that he’s a Hall of Famer if you’re not already convinced. Neil Paine crunched the stats, as did The Sporting News. Both of them use advanced stats, mostly because when you do every single danged thing well, those kinds of numbers usually are going to be your best friend. These arguments will fall flat with far too many people, just like they do for Raines.

Comparable peak to Sandy Koufax, the godfather of all burst-of-brilliance Hall of Fame cases? Doesn’t matter. One of the best second basemen in history? Doesn’t matter. Here’s what too many voters will see:

MVPs: 0
Gold Gloves: 0
30-homer seasons: 3
100-RBI seasons: 4
Over-.300 seasons: 2

This isn’t to say that every voter is going to use prehistoric metrics when figuring out their vote. Maybe not even a majority of them. But at least 25 percent of them will, and that’s just enough to hose Utley. He’s basically Bret Boone if you’re looking at the instructions upside down. Utley led the league in a major category just once -- runs, in 2006.

The most damning piece of evidence to support the idea that he’ll be criminally overlooked is that Utley finished with an MVP vote in five different seasons, and he was behind another Phillies player every time. In 2005, he hit like Pat Burrell while playing a superlative second base. Burrell finished ahead in the voting. In 2008, he had maybe his best season, hitting like Ryan Howard while playing a superlative second base. He finished 12 spots behind Howard, sandwiched between Geovany Soto and Ryan Ludwick.

Those are the same people who vote for the Hall of Fame.

He wasn’t appreciated then, and the combination of statistical evidence and distant nostalgia isn’t going to make up the difference. It’s easy to mention him offhand as one of the best second basemen ever, but do you know where he actually ranks, in terms of WAR for the position? He’s 14th. Let’s just run down some of the players ahead of him:

6. Lou Whitaker
7. Bobby Grich
11. Willie Randolph

It’s a who’s who of Hall of Fame tomfoolery. Whitaker fell off the first ballot, which still makes me want to take a bite out of my keyboard, and so did the other two. Randolph got 1.1 percent of the vote. Grich got just over two percent. Utley will fare better, possibly even much better, than that. But there’s historical precedence for the HOF to ignore second basemen who do everything well.

If he hit 400 homers, but played stone-thumbed defense, he might have a better shot. If he stole 500 bases, but hit just a dozen homers every year, he might have a better shot. If he hit .330 year after year, but ran like a 40-year-old catcher in full gear, he might have a better shot. As is, he was simply excellent at everything, and it’s going to make him a cause célèbre for the statistically minded for years. He might get in, even.

In the meantime, he’ll have to be satisfied with being one of the very best players to ever play for a 115-year-old franchise. Somehow, I think he’ll be just fine with that, even if most of us won’t be.