Serious Baseball: Chase Utley

In 2005 the Philadelphia Phillies came within one game of making the playoffs as the NL Wild Card, but ended up losing that spot to the Houston Astros. One of the players that made the Phillies’ offense “click” to the tune of 807 runs (2nd in the NL), was 26-year old second baseman Chase Utley.

Utley led all NL second baseman in OPS (.915), SLG% (.540), Isolated Power (.249), Runs Created (110.7), RC/27 (7.38), XBH (73), Total Bases (293), and RBI (Tied with Jeff Kent, 105).

To say the least, it looks like the Phillies have the second base position covered for the next few years. Seriously though, can Utley have another season like he did in 2005, his first full-time campaign, in 2006?

To try and answer this question we must look at Utley’s past performance record.

Here are his statistics in every season he’s played since 1999 (including college):

Year	AB	AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	OPS	IPD	ISOP
1999 (UCLA)	271	0.317	0.380	0.557	16	0.937	0.063	0.240
2000 (UCLA)	283	0.382	0.448	0.689	22	1.137	0.066	0.307
2000 (Batavia)	153	0.307	0.384	0.444	2	0.828	0.077	0.137
2001 (Clearwater)	467	0.257	0.316	0.422	16	0.738	0.059	0.165
2002 (Scranton)	464	0.263	0.335	0.461	17	0.796	0.072	0.198
2003 (Scranton)	431	0.323	0.390	0.517	18	0.907	0.067	0.194
2003 (Philadelphia)	134	0.239	0.322	0.373	2	0.695	0.083	0.134
2004 (Scranton)	123	0.285	0.368	0.512	6	0.880	0.083	0.227
2004 (Philadelphia)	267	0.266	0.308	0.468	13	0.776	0.042	0.202
2005 (Philadelphia)	543	0.291	0.376	0.540	28	0.916	0.085	0.249

If you’ve read any of my past articles then you are aware of the stats represented in the last two columns of the above chart. But if you haven’t, here is a quick review:

IPD: Isolated Plate Discipline: On-Base Percentage minus Batting Average. Indicates how selective a hitter is. League average is between .060-.065.

ISOP: Isolated Power: Slugging Percentage minus Batting Average. Indicates how much extra base power a hitter has. League average is between .152 and .157.

The reason these two stats are listed is because they are very helpful when predicting future performances of players. Both of them are attributes of a player’s game that tend to not regress. If a players average IPD is .065, it will usually be around there regardless if his batting average is .200 or .300. The same thing goes for ISOP.

So, can Chase Utley have another season like 2005?

Well, lets first start looking at how patient a hitter Utley is. His progress in IPD is very well represented in this chart:


You can see that Utley is a very disciplined hitter, and only dropped below average in this department in his 267 AB’s with the Phillies in 2004. As a matter of a fact, he showed the most discipline he ever has last season with his .085 IPD.

Like I mentioned earlier, IPD is something that doesn’t tend to regress. Meaning, the .085 he posted last year as a 26 year old, combined with the fairly steady improvement throughout his career is a very good sign that he has half the battle already won: He won’t get himself out by swinging at bad pitches.

OK, so he has the patience to give a repeat performance, but does he have the power? Or was 2005 a fluke? Well, here is his ISOP progression chart to try and answer this question:

His power clearly took a large hit after leaving college, but since then he has pretty much consistently gotten better in this part of the game. The thing is though, even in his worst years, his ISOP was .134 and .137, which isn’t that far under the league average to begin with. The point is that Utley already possesses the power to be at least league average in this part of the game. He is only getting better, is still young, and playing a ballpark that can only add to his power numbers (Citizens Bank Ballpark). He may actually improve in this category next season.

So now that we know the essentials (does he have patience, can he hit for power), the only question left is how high can he keep his batting average? Once we figure this out, the other parts of his game should fall right into place.

Batting average is a very tough stat to predict, and to try and attempt this; we must look at Utley’s batting average on balls in play. This is referred to as BABIP and is figured by dividing the amount of non-HR hits a player accumulates by the number of balls he put in play (Outs-K+Hits-HR).

Throughout a player’s career, they will sometimes have a BABIP higher than the average, indicating luck was on his side, and the inverse is true for a BABIP lower than the league average. The league average is around .300.

In 2005 Chase Utley’s BABIP was .315. Seeing a BABIP this high above average means sooner of later he will regress back to the mean (.300). Now I’m not going to say that in 2006 Utley is suddenly going to have a .260 BABIP, but if I were a betting man, I’d bet he his BABIP would be somewhere closer to .300. This obviously would drop his overall batting average as well.

OK, now I’ve determined that Utley’s batting average will drop in 2006. Now, using his trends in IPD and ISOP, I should be able to make an educated prediction on his final 2006 numbers.

This prediction is based on a full season worth of AB’s (500+):

.276/.354/.536 (.890 OPS), 25 HR

I know the 2005 season isn’t even over yet, and I’m probably one of the first writers making predictions on 2006, but this is what I love to do, and I will continue to do from now until the start of the 2006 baseball season. I hope you don’t mind, and I hope that maybe, in some way that this prediction, and the method behind it, can be useful to you.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at frnkbndy@yahoo.com.