What an impossible game baseball is to figure out.
Heading into the Phillies/Yankees series, I told a Yankees fan that I thought the Phillies would win the first game with Roy Halladay on the bump, but then lose the next two with the patient Yankees hitters dismantling the salad Kyle Kendrick and Jamie Moyer bring to the table.
Good thing I don't bet on baseball.
So the Phillies have now won three of their last four games which were against powerhouses like the Red Sox and Yankees [while the Mets tear up the woeful Indians and Orioles, thanks interleague play!] and things are looking better. Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth both had nice at-bats that resulted in home runs in Wednesday's game, but, Chase Utley remains mired in his slump.
While Utley seems to think part of his problem is being jinxed or cursed and setting up some voodoo bats might help [hey, he's got a point, a .262 batting average on balls in play with an 18% line drive rate is a bit on the unlucky side], we might have finally found out about the injury we've suspected he's been suffering from. In an interview at Baseball Prospectus regarding base stealing, Phillies first base coach Davy Lopes divulged that Utley has been "hampered by a little bit of a knee injury."
Who knows how much it is affecting Utley, maybe a little, maybe a lot, but however much it is, hopefully he doesn't compensate for the injury so much that his swing is wrecked for the year, even after the injury has healed.
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