Just to season the prevailing heat and humidity with some doom and gloom, Chase Utley injured his right thumb in the fourth inning while sliding into second last night in Cincinnati. Juan Castro pinch-hit for him in the ninth, the first ominous sign that something was amiss. As Utley recently said, It's not an injury if you can play through it. Utley is the ultimate play-through-it kind of guy. That he took himself out of the game does not bode well. He will have an MRI today.
Worse, the injury happened in a 7-3 loss. The Phillies never quite looked in this one. Schneider was playing for the injured Ruiz and Valdez for the injured Polance, which left the bottom third of the order looking bereft. Even listening to the game, it was too hot and sticky here to get too worked up about it. Until, that is, the ninth inning.
The Phillies have had their real line-up intact and functioning for only a handful of games this season. All I know is that anytime Utley is out of the line-up it's a scary thing for Phillies' fans. The injury list just keeps getting longer.
For the winning Reds, Scott Rolen hit the 300th home run of his career. Half of those came while he was a Phillie. (Why, oh why, did Rolen have to be so sour?) The Reds were looking last night like the Phillies of recent times, with lots of energetic offense and sturdy defense.
