Chase Utley, Carlos Ruiz Sadly Begin Rehabbing to Return to Phillies

How anxious are you every day to get to that magical 7:05 hour for the first pitch of the Phillies game?

Less than ever, right?  Imagine you have to suit up, stretch out, and go play for that team.  Impossible.

Chase Utley and Carlos Ruiz have my sympathies, except for their awesome lives.  I don’t pity them for those.  Just in this case, that they are both at the moment injured and unable to play.

May 7, 2013; San Francisco, CA, USA; Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Chase Utley (26, right) is congratulated by catcher Carlos Ruiz (51) for scoring against the San Francisco Giants during the first inning at AT

Chase and Chooch will be rehabbing in Lehigh Valley this week, along with the Phillies of the recent past and near future.  The whole system is in a state of flux as catchers are reassigned based on the Erik Kratz injury.  Cameron Rupp bumped up to Lehigh from Reading (Meanwhile, Sebastian Valle has been chucking dudes out for 48 hours).

The Phillies are saying the dynamic duo could be back as early as June 18 – at least, that appears to be the goal.

Of course, the Phillies could very well be out of it by then, in a little over a week.  We may have lost 10 straight!  Ha!  Ha.

So, yeah; you may notice that despite the imminent return of two stars, nobody’s doing the “They’re playing .500 ball and they don’t even have Utley and Ruiz back yet!” thing because it’s pretty obvious that this year isn’t a year like that.