This week we look at who should be a better pick in 2008, Chase Utley or Jimmy Rollins

Rob McQuown–In real baseball? I don’t think it’s even close. Utley is so far ahead of other second-basemen offensively, that it’s not even funny. The “gold glove” for Rollins doesn’t make him elite on defense… he’s good, but so is Utley, and Rollins’ lack of on-base percentage makes him a lot less useful on offense than he appears.

In roto, however, it’s not even close, too… but in the other direction! Roto is all about playing time, first of all, and Rollins’ durability, lack of walks and leadoff role make for huge at-bat totals. Add to that the absurdly high value of stolen bases in Rotisserie, and Rollins looks even better.

While you have to be careful to pick up RBI from other sources, and while Rollins will almost certainly regress significantly in 2008, he’s still the money pick over Utley. I do think that the smaller the league, the less the “gap” between them, since a lot of Rollins’ value comes from his batting average over his high AB totals, and as the average BA goes up, that becomes a lot less important… and Utley’s skill set plays big in any size league.

William Johnson–I like Utley, but only slightly, and that depends on how the individual league scoring rules work. Rollins has an obvious speed advantage. If SB are at all at a premium, then his value is tremendous. Both have similar home run potential, but Utley’s multiple-category, cumulative advantage in BA, HR, and RBI (ironically, driving in Rollins), along with his clear dominance of the 2B position in terms of scarcity, give him a small edge for me. Even if both regress to the mean in the BA and HR categories in 2008, Utley should sustain his edge, and the nature of his hand injury last year is not the type of problem likely to recur this year. I’d take Utley, but be very very happy with Rollins. Tastes great, and less filling.

Mike Podhorzer–Rollins. It’s all about the steals here. I have him valued $9 more than Utley in my standard 12-team mixed league, and that’s because of the 28 steal difference I’ve projected. The small edge Utley has in the other 4 categories is more than made up for by Rollins’ SB advantage. I also slightly worry about the broken hand Utley suffered last year. When he returned, his power was down, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him get off to a slow start in the HR department. This is something I rarely see mentioned when discussing Utley and it certainly increases his risk. Rollins should of course regress, but he’s slightly more reliable according to Baseball HQ’s reliability scores and has no ongoing injury risk, unlike Utley with the broken hand from last year. I don’t think position matters assuming you’re dealing with a league with an MI slot, since you’d bunch SS and 2B together.

Brian Joura–I’d pick Utley. He did fine once he returned last year – isolated slugging mark of .195 in September – and I see no reason for that to go down after additional healing time. Utley was better than Rollins in 2006 and would have been better in 2007 except for the injury. I think it’s unlikely that Rollins comes close to repeating his MVP season in which he established career highs in 11 offensive categories and tied in another. Finally, there are more quality shortstops than second basemen in fantasy, further tilting things in Utley’s favor.

Andrew Cleary–I’ll add my voice to the Rollins/steals chorus. Rollins’ 20+ projected steals advantage on Utley more than makes up for the 15 or so projected RBI advantage Utley has. While you can pick up players to shore up a steals deficit on your team, I usually find that such players come with their own deficits in just about every other batting category. Rollins gives you steals, which are hard to find in large quantities, and does so with superior batting numbers (relative to most other speedsters)–except for his average, which is at least league-average. There’s not much chance Rollins will hit 30 home runs again like he did last season, but Utley seems a likelier candidate to regress with his 2007 .362 BABIP, as opposed to Rollins’ .300. If the steals advantage doesn’t sway you to Rollins, Utley’s likelier candidacy for regression should at least give you pause

Brandon Heikoop–I am, like everyone else, going to have to go with Rollins. For me, it has less to do with the statistics then the position scarcity. That is, I actually anticipate Rollins to regress more so then Utley. While Rollins has a substantially lower BABIP, it is in line with his career mark despite the drastic increase in fly balls.

That said, once Reyes, Rollins and Ramirez are drafted the pool of short stops becomes so incredibly shallow, that it is tough to get value by drafting anyone at the point required to get them. That is, in a recent draft (no MI position), instead of taking Bartlett, Lugo, Greene, etc in one of the final rounds, I decided to take Schilling whom I can slot in at the DL and pick up whoever is on the waiver wire.

Conversely, with Utley, one can make the argument that a Wigginton holds similar value despite being available some 200 picks later.

And that is why my money is on Rollins.