MRI reveals patellar tendinitis for Utley

So many people in the baseball world had pretty much penciled in the Phillies as one of the two teams playing in this year’s World Series after they added Cliff Lee to their already powerful rotation. With four aces that also include Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt, the Phils were a lock, right?

Well, this is the kind of crap that can derail everything. Chase Utley has been resting with an injury that the team wasn’t all that forthcoming about. But, now he’s had an MRI on his knee and it showed patellar tendinitis.

“It was bothering him enough and bothering me enough, frankly, to go ahead and do that,” Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said of the MRI. “[The tendinitis] causes some soreness, and rather than really push him early here, we’re going to kind of take it easy on him so there aren’t residual effects during the course of the year. If he continues to aggravate it, it could get more painful.”

Utley says he’s dealt with this before, so if he has to sit for now then so be it.

“It’s probably been here and there for a while now,” Utley said. “There’s no rhyme or reason to why it starts to flare up on me, but it is part of being an everyday player. … I try to look at the big picture. I think we have hopefully 200 more games to play this year. I’d rather participate in the majority of them later on.”

Keep an eye on this one. The Phillies bats were not good last year and they’ll need to be better for the Phils to win it all. Regardless of how many aces they have.