Analysis: How MLB’s suspension of Chase Utley is unfair to players and umpires

If timing truly is everything in life, then Major League Baseball seriously needs to work on its time management.

Its decision to suspend Chase Utley for two games for his late slide into Ruben Tejada in Game 2 sends a troubling and confusing message to players and umpires in the postseason.

It was essentially a precedent, players having thrown themselves into infielders to break up double plays since horsehide was first stitched around a ball of yarn. And almost without exception, there was no ensuing suspension.

That was until Game 2 of the Dodgers-Mets National League division series. Then Tejada got turned awkwardly around and had his feet knocked out from under him by Utley’s late, chop-block style (not a tackle) slide that sadly left Tejada with a broken fibula.

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Now if MLB wants to issue a new rule to protect infielders, no problem. If MLB wants to reinterpret the existing rules giving umpires more pointed direction as to how they’re to be enforced, no problem.

But you don’t suddenly change the game in the middle of the playoffs when, now more than ever, players are supposed to be playing hard, going all out to win.

After the Utley suspension, exactly what is a player to think as he runs to second needing to break up a double play attempt? How much contact is allowed? How far off the base can he drift while still able to reach the bag?

And what is an umpire to think? He’s been calling this play one way his entire career and now in the middle of October he’s supposed to adjust on the fly to a more stringent rule interpretation?

It’s not like Utley just started sliding like this. He’s been doing it his entire career. Last month against the Padres, he slid way wide of the second base bag to take out infielder Jedd Gyorko.

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It was not his first take-out slide of Tejada, either. He did a similar take out slide against him in 2010 while with the Phillies.

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Neither was is the first time Utley did a take-out slide in the postseason. Here he is while with the Phillies in 2010 taking out the Cardinals’ Ryan Theriot.

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Pirates second baseman Jung-Ho Kang had his season ended this year on a take-out slide.

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And Kang can’t complain too much, since he slides the same way.

There is also the Cardinals’ 6-4, 250-pound Matt Holliday taking out Giants infielder Marco Scutaro behind the bag in the 2012 playoffs.

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FOR THE RECORD

Oct. 13, 6:48 a.m.: An earlier version of this post misspelled the last name of Matt Holliday as Holiday.

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On and on it goes. The Internet is littered with examples. Because it happens all the time.

Say that something more needs to be done, and I won’t argue. Just don’t try and pull it off midstream. It’s not fair to any one and reeks of absurd timing.

Follow Steve Dilbeck on Twitter @SteveDilbeck

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