After Chase Utley crushed a three-run homer against the Mets on ESPN a couple weeks back, Joe Morgan said, sort of flippantly (I think), that Utley has a chance to be the best-hitting second baseman ever. Since then I’ve read and heard some similar things, so I thought I’d look at Utley vs. some of the all-time great 2Bs.
Provisos: Utley is in his sixth major-league season, and he’s 29, which means he’s already heading toward the tail end of his prime. Since he wasn’t a full-time big leaguer until age 26, it’s unlikely that he’ll have a long enough career to rack up the big career-total stats (3,000 hits, etc.) that people tend to focus on and overrate. That doesn’t have much to do with how good he is.
Also, I’m doing this with the knowledge that making grand statements about a player’s career when it’s less than half over is a fool’s errand. Consider Ken Griffey and Dave Parker, to cite two off-the-top-of-the-head examples.
The control group: Rogers Hornsby, Charlie Gehringer, Jackie Robinson, Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins, Robert Alomar and Ryne Sandberg.
Utley’s career batting line heading into this season is .304 batting, .378 on base and .537 slugging. He’s well above average defensively, and as good as baserunner as there is.
Hornsby could, um, hit a little. How does .358/.434/.577 sound?. He hit .400 seven times, won the Triple Crown twice, won seven batting titles, led the league in on-base nine times, slugging nine times and OPS 11 times
Hornsby played in severe hitter’s parks, mostly in a hitter’s era, and was probably below-average defensively. But still.
Everybody else, Utley is right there with or above offensively. Gehringer, Collins, Robinson and to an extent Alomar were good hitters for average with high on-base numbers and excellent defense for a long, long time. Utley looks like he’s going to have more power, perhaps not quite the BA/OBP, not quite the defense.
As a baserunner, Utley is probably near the top of the group, with Morgan and Robinson.
Morgan and Sandberg were both the best players in the game (or very close) at their absolute peaks, with everything in their games notched a few octaves lower most of the time. Sandberg’s power dropped off considerably before and after his peak stretch. Both Sandberg and Morgan, Sandberg in particular, were probably better defensively than Utley.
There are 18 second basemen in the hall of fame. As an offensive player, Utley has an excellent chance to finish in the top half of that group. He’s likely in the bottom half of that group defensively. Unless something crazy happens, he is not likely to be considered the very best of the bunch. But if he stays healthy and has a long career, Utley will be a Hall of Famer.
You probably could have figured that out yourself, I guess.
