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Well, it was probably bound to happen. Per Jim Salisbury, Chase utley is out of the lineup again today, and will have an MRI on his ailing ribcage tomorrow.
“When he took a swing, he felt a little burn, a pain in his rib cage,” manager Charlie Manuel said of Utley after Tuesday's game. “Sometimes if you keep playing that can get more serious and you lose time. I’ve had those things. It’s hard to breathe, really hard to swing. We’ll see. Hopefully we don’t lose him for very long.”
Utley missed the first part of the last two seasons with knee injuries, and hasn't played in more than 115 games in a season since 2009. He's still managed to amass 14 WAR over that time.
Utley is in the last year of his contract with the Phillies and is currently leading the team in OPS, and has twice as many WAR (1.4) than the next player on the team, Freddy Galvis (0.7) who will likely fill in for Chase should he require a DL stint.
To put the WAR into perspective, the rest of the infield regulars (Young, Howard, Rollins) plus Ben Revere and Dom Brown have combined for 1.6 WAR total on the season.
Oblique and Rib injuries are both painful and can take serious time to recover from. it's quite likely this is a DL stint about to happen, and added to the injuries to Lannan, Ruiz and Mike Adams, not only severely hurts both the teams depth and ability to compete, it also severely dent their trade value, should the Phillies decide to move salary and veterans at the deadline.
Stay tuned.