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Phillies' Utley: 'I didn't play as well as I could have'

Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports / Reuters

Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Chase Utley lamented Saturday his disappointing production throughout the second half of the season that marred an auspicious start to his campaign.

"I'm not really satisfied with it," Utley told MLB.com. "I didn't play as well as I could have. I've never really been satisfied with my seasons. The last few months, I haven't really swung the bat so well."

Utley stormed out of the gate in 2014, hitting .333/.389/.556 with 27 extra-base hits through his first 43 games but slowed considerably as the season progressed. The 35-year-old owns a .669 OPS over his last 111 contests and hasn't hit a home run since Aug. 10.

"Throughout the course of the year, you slowly wear down a little bit, especially when you're playing every day," said Utley, who has played 154 games and started 147. "I don't feel like I did when I was 25. You don't bounce back quite as quickly. But even on days I didn't feel so great, I still felt I had the opportunity to help us win."

The Phillies were even more disappointing this season, missing the playoffs for a third consecutive year while finishing last in the National League East for the first time since 2000.

"I'm not saying we should have won the World Series, but I think we should have finished with a better record," Utley said. "The way I look at it, there were probably, over the course of this year, 12, 14, 15 games that I thought we should have won that we didn't, and there's probably about four or five we shouldn't have won that we did win. So a .500 record is, in my opinion, kind of where we were headed."

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