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In the grand tradition of acquiring Shane Victorino and Mat Latos, the Los Angeles Dodgers are reportedly close to acquiring Chase Utley from the Philadelphia Phillies. They'll apparently give up "mid-level" prospects in the deal.
Alternate lede: So you know those jerks? They just got jerkier. They got that jerk from around the way. You know that jerk? Yeah. What a bunch of jerks.
The Giants are two games back in the NL West. They need bench help. They need a stopgap at second base. In a lot of ways, Chase Utley made a lot of sense. The Dodgers realized that, though, and they realized that he made a lot of sense for them, too. Utley is from Southern California, and that's apparently where he wanted to be, even though he lives in Northern California in the offseason. This is because he has bad taste and smells bad.
Wow, this is all coming so naturally.
The Dodgers will absorb $2 million of Utley's salary, apparently, so money wasn't really the issue. It was a) where Utley wanted to go and b) the prospects the Dodgers were willing to give up. Considering that there are five weeks in the season and Kelby Tomlinson isn't performing in an AIEEEE-GET-HIM-OFF-THE-ROSTER kind of way (.333!), the Giants probably weren't comfortable coming over the top with a better prospect package. If they wanted Utley that bad, they could have claimed him in the first place and just sucked the financial obligations up.
Best-case scenario: Utley goes full Ricky Ledee, and at least one of the prospects going to the Phillies makes an All-Star team or 12.
Worst-case scenario: Utley hits well in the regular season and in the postseason and, well, you know.
Likeliest scenario: This will either help the Dodgers win an extra game, unless it doesn't.
Here's hoping the Giants have some sort of solution against Utley for the remaining seven head-to-head games of the season. It's too late to go out and get another reliever, so they need to make do with what they h ...
Chase Utley vs. Javier Lopez
20 AB, 0 H, 2 BB
Ugh, two walks? I guess that's fine, considering the .000 average, but there's room for improvement. To the film room, Javier! To the film room, post-haste!
It was going to be weird to root for Chase Utley. Somehow, it isn't going to be a problem to root against him twice as hard. Perhaps this is the universe telling us something.