Phillies place Utley and Polanco on DL

by Eric Schwartz

Tuesday June 29, 2010 

Phillies place Utley and Polanco on DL thumbnail

The mountain to climb to get back to first place in the NL East just got a little tougher for the Philadelphia Phillies.

And it has nothing to do with the schedule.

Just hours after finding out Chase Utley was being put on the DL the team announced that Placido Polanco will be joining him. That’s two All-Stars in one day.

Utley injured his thumb in last night’s loss to the Reds, while Polanco had missed the last three games with elbow soreness.

The news could be worse for Utley as CSN is reporting that he has a sprained collateral ligament in his right thumb. I’m no doctor, but is has the sound of an injury that could linger a lot longer than 15 days.

And all of this happens just after the team finally got a healthy Jimmy Rollins back.

So where will the team go to reinforce itself? Sadly, the moves have paved the way for Greg Dobbs to be called back into action — a week after it looked like we would never see him in a Phillies uniform again. Brian Bocock was also called up to fill in the hole at second.

The injury may also prevent Polanco and Utley from competing in the All-Star game which will be played July 13 in Anaheim, Calif. David Wright has closed Polanco’s lead over the last week from 130,300 votes to 23,000 and the injury may just doom him when it comes to the ballots. Even if he does hang on to the lead, this injury  may keep him from playing.

This is clearly a big blow for a team trying to hunt down the Braves and Mets in a tight NL East race. On Wednesday Phillysportsblogs will give its two cents on whether the team can make it through this stretch without falling to far back.

In the meantime, what do you think?

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Filed Under Phillies

Comments

3 Responses to “Phillies place Utley and Polanco on DL”

  1. Jersey Joe on June 29th, 2010 3:45 pm

    It is time for the starting pitching to step up and pitch in tight ballgames. The days of 5 -7 runs per game is over with the line up the Fightens will be putting on the field in the next 2 weeks.

  2. Marshall on June 29th, 2010 4:29 pm

    The pitching does need to pick it up for this team to win some games during that time. They also need Howard Rollins and Werth to all get hot at the same time, something that is yet to happen.

  3. Phillies on a slide on July 8th, 2010 9:25 am

    [...] Marshall says – The pitching does need to pick it up for this team to win… [...]

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