In a move surprising no one, both Chase Utley and Pedro Feliz will undergo surgery next week – Utley for his hip, and Feliz for his lower back. Utley could be on the shelf for 6 months, although I expect he’ll be chomping at the bit to be on the field asap.

Chase clearly was playing hurt the second half of 2008. He was on pace for a historic offensive year after the first 2 months. Then, a complete 180. The sooner they get this resolved, the better off the Phils and Utley will be. This could either be an opening for Jason Donald to show what he’s got, or for a journeyman like Tad Iguchi to fill in until Utley is ready to strap his cleats on again.

On Utley – knowing that he was playing with a bum hip for months, and still cranked 2 absolutely critical homers in the postseason, adds even more to what is shaping up to be an amazing Phillies career. In Game 1 of the NLCS, when it looked like the Phils wouldn’t do squat against Derek Lowe, Utley launched one in the 6th inning. Then, in Game 1 of the World Series, he jumped on a Scott Kazmir offering in the first inning to stake Cole Hamels to an early lead.

It sounds like Feliz should recover more quickly, but you wonder if he’ll fight back issues throught ’09, resulting in more of a platoon situation with Greg Dobbs. Feliz played 129 games at 3B last year.

Update:
Todd Zolecki and David Murphy have updates from a conference call that Ruben Amaro Jr. just conducted with reporters regarding Utley.