MLB Network analyst and former Phillies closer Mitch Williams said yesterday that he believes a foot injury is behind Chase Utley’s postseason throwing problems:
I think he’s hurt. Watch the way he’s trying to throw the baseball. He can’t put his right foot in the ground. I’m not going to sit back and listen to people say he’s got the yips. That ain’t the case. To get the yips, you’ve got to be really weak-minded. Chase is a lot of things. Weak-minded ain’t one of them.
When I saw the first one, you run it back, and he steps on the bag with his right foot, and the first thing you’re going to do there is drop, plant and throw. He doesn’t. He basically sets himself up to get killed at second base.
I don’t know if it’s the hip. It’s something on his right side. I could be really wrong, but when the season’s over, there’s going to be something come out that Chase has been playing with this.
Utley has said throughout the postseason that he feels fine, but Scott Lauber of the Delaware News Journal notes that he said the same thing last year before undergoing offseason hip surgery and missed some time this September after fouling a ball off his right foot.
Whether his throwing problems are physical or mental there’s definitely something amiss, because he’s made several throwing errors while looking shaky on numerous other throws this postseason after committing a grand total of just four throwing errors in 1,357 innings during the regular season.
