Chase Utley, it was just announced, will undergo arthroscopic hip surgery to evaluate and correct any “labral or bony injury.” It’s stunning news and more surprising due to the high level of play from Utley throughout the season and playoffs. This is a serious injury that in the worst case could keep him out six months if there’s significant tears to the acetabular (hip) labrum. Several pitchers have come back from this type of injury - Justin Duchscherer being one - but no player comes to mind. (Update: Gordon Edes reminds me that Mike Lowell has a similar issue, but that his timetable is much shorter. Lowell is still expected back for Spring Training.) The timetable tells us that Utley may have more severe damage that Lowell.
I’ll be discussing this on XM 175 in moments and will be following this to see what the doctors found in surgery, in order to better assess when Utley will return.
If there is anything that could suck the joy out of me from the Phillies winning a World Series, it's Chase being out for the better part of next year. Hopefully he can get back into the swing of things soon.
My wife has a hip labrum tear that has "folded over" according to the doctors. She's been walking around on it for over a year and it hurts her quite a bit, walking around if she takes a slightly off step, going up stairs, even shifting her sitting position. Idiot "well respected" doctor she went to at first insisted it was bursitis or tendonitis for about 8 months until she went to another doctor who finally did an arthrogram which made it pretty obvious that it was a tear (we had suspect this for months since she'd had bursitis and tendonitis before and knew it wouldn't last that long without some period where it lessened especially after all the PT she'd been doing on the hip).
She's not a major league baseball player and they told her four weeks on crutches and then continued physical therapy.
Given I know how much this is hurting my wife, it's amazing that Utley was able to still play at the level he did. Of course, Utley is a pretty amazing player.
I'm not sure how much people care about this sort of thing, but this means Utley can't be the US 2B for the WBC. Hopefully Pedroia or Roberts will be available (I'm assuming Kinsler would skip it).
I presume wonk's referring to Kinsler's sports hernia that ended his 2008 season. In fact, according to this Kinsler may not even be *allowed* to play by MLB:
Phils just did a teleconference with beat writers, and Amaro said that the Phillies expect Utley to be "fairly close to ready, if not ready, by opening day." Sounds like wishcasting?
Also said they expected to use a combo of Bruntlett and Donald if Chase wasn't ready to go. There could be a silver lining here if it enables the Phils to get a peek at Donald to see what he can do at the major league level.
No, I'm actually surprised at the June talk. That's an absolute, everything goes wrong worst case scenario. Four months seems more reasonable, but that's without knowing what's inside.
Not really. They couldn't see my wife's tear on a standard MRI. They could tell on an arthrogram largely because the contrast 'ink' they put in there was leaking out via the tear. They think that it "folded over" based on what they saw in the arthrogram but they said they won't know exactly what the damage is on her until they get in there and see it and fix it. I'd assume it's the same case for Utley.
Also, it is theoretically possible for him to be ready or close by opening day depending on how bad it is. Since it's hard to know that now, it's hard to know the time frame. If it's not as bad as it could be the 4-5 month timeframe seems possible and would put him back or close by the opener.
If we're talking 6 months from the very near future, then that puts us not far from opening day, so I don't see the Phillies statement as inconsistent with this.
Dan Johnson had a torn labrum in his hip at the start of the 2007 season when playing with the A's... IIRC He missed the latter half of Spring Training '07 and the first 20 games of the '07 season, but was basically fine after that. The only long-term problem was that he's still, you know, Dan Johnson...
Can I be the geek this time? Players aren't ever worth 30 wins, not on their best day, not even on that side of Barry Bonds. Don't care about the Phils or Mets, but the Mets are just treading water at this point and they're going to start sinking without some smart moves this offseason.
Be great to hear from someone who knows something about swing mechanics on this. Utley has one of the prettiest swings in the business--I always marvel at his ability to generate power out of such short seemingly effortless stroke. It seems to me it has to do with the way he works off his front leg, and somehow I wasn't surprised to hear about this injury. Was it the right side?
It's really not all that surprising for those following the Phillies closely in Philadelphia. Howard Eskin reported a long time ago that Utley had a serious hip injury (denied by the Phillies, but obviously true) and it doesn't take a mathmetician to see Utley's declining power numbers as the season went on (25HRs pre ASB, 8 post is one example).
Good point. See Camp, it is potentially good news for your keeper team if in fact April was Utley's only real month last year. Don't look now, but his post April numbers were scary.
So are we supposed to be surprised when the guy leads the majors two years running in HBP, and pretty much goes all out in the field and on the base paths (ask Jesus Flores about the latter)? Not that I deplore athleticism in baseball, but hard play has a price.
(BTW, Paul Hagen reported the hip injury in the PDN on July 28, at which time it was confirmed by Pat Gillick. Hagen followed up in an October 8 column.)
30 comments have been left for this post.
If there is anything that could suck the joy out of me from the Phillies winning a World Series, it's Chase being out for the better part of next year. Hopefully he can get back into the swing of things soon.
Mountainhawk....
I don't want to hear it. You got your championship.
You can still root for Lehigh.
Not likely. Lehigh goes down again tomorrow.