Phillies Notebook: Rollins likely done for 2014

MIAMI - It's highly unlikely you'll see Jimmy Rollins take the field at Marlins Park this afternoon, or in the three games that follow at Citizens Bank Park to close out the 2014 season.

Rollins sat out for the 15th straight game last night. He suffered a left hamstring injury on Sept. 8 and despite taking regular fielding work and batting practice in the last week, has yet to run at full speed.

Although no one will say he has been shut down for the season, Rollins has pretty much been shut down for the season.

"Would it be wise [to play again]?" Rollins said. "It would not be wise."

The probability that you'll see Rollins when the Phillies reconvene in Clearwater in February, however? That's much higher.

"I'll be here next year," he said.

Rollins, who turns 36 in November, will play the last season of his contract with the Phillies in 2015. The final year of a 4-year, $44 million deal kicked in this summer when a vesting option tied to plate appearances was reached.

If you ignore batting average - Rollins hit .243, tying a career low - the longest-tenured Phillies player (and athlete in Philadelphia, actually) had a productive, bounce-back season in 2014.

After hitting .252 with career lows in home runs (6) and OPS (.667) in 160 games in 2013, Rollins hit 17 home runs and had a .717 OPS this season. He also reached a career high in walks, with 64 in 138 games.

Among major league shortstops, Rollins ranks seventh in OPS, OBP (.323), slugging percentage (.394), third in home runs and in stolen bases (28).

Although he doesn't have the range of his younger counterparts in the division, namely Miami's Adeiny Hechavarria and Atlanta's Andrelton Simmons, Rollins was also sound defensively. Among shortstops who played in at least 130 games, Rollins has the fewest errors (7) and best fielding percentage (.988); his 4.27 range factor (putouts and assists divided by nine innings) ranks ninth among major league shortstops.

"This was better," Rollins said of 2014 when compared to 2013. "This was better. This wasn't quite as good. I don't know what the overall grade would be, but you're never doing enough if you're not winning. Ultimately, that's how we grade ourselves as athletes."

If he's keeping a job as personal grader, Rollins wouldn't be able to give himself high marks since 2011, since that was the last time the Phillies finished with a winning record. Since the team has gone from five-time division champion to perennial cellar- dweller during that time, wouldn't Rollins at least have to listen if the Phillies came to him this winter and said, "Hey, Team X is interested in you. Any thoughts to waiving your no-trade clause?"

"They could also say, 'Guess who we're signing? We want you to be a part of this,' " Rollins countered.

The man who helped propel the Phillies into a winner - first with his "team to beat" declaration, then with an MVP season to back it up - thinks the front office will continue to do what's necessary to turn their fortunes around.

"We have enough money to," Rollins said. "So you can't say we don't have the money to make improvements in the places that need to be improved, or where they can make them, whichever is the priority. We're in a big market. A big-market payroll. So you have to go out there and make it happen."

And unlike, say, Miami, there are big-market expectations, too. So maybe the Phillies will invade the international market with a stronger tenacity; general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. has been to Japan and scouted Cuban free agent Yasmany Tomas in the last 2 weeks.

"I didn't see that until [Tuesday] night," Rollins said. "If that's the trend, you got to get in while it's hot. [Jose] Abreu, [Yoenis] Cespedes, Aroldis [Chapman], [Yasiel] Puig, [Jorge] Soler and [Javier] Baez. Geez. It's just - they're picking the right ones. You're not having to sift through a thousand kids at the academies. It's - here are our 10 best . . . We've got to get our hands in that market."

Rollins may not play again in 2014, but he remains upbeat about 2015, despite the increasing age of the Phillies' core players and the decreasing win total in each of the last three seasons.

"That's what's so great about being a ballplayer: We get to write that story," Rollins said.

Ben Revere entered play yesterday with 47 stolen bases, the most by a Phillies player since Jimmy Rollins stole 47 in 2008. No Phillies player has stolen 50 bases or more since current first-base coach Juan Samuel stole 53 in 1985. Since 1900, the Phillies have had only two players steal 50 bases in a season: Samuel (53 in 1985, 72 in 1984) and Sherry Magee (55 in 1906) . . . Chase Utley entered play yesterday in the midst of the longest home run drought of his career. Utley hadn't hit a home run in 134 consecutive at-bats, since Aug. 10 against the New York Mets. His previous career-long drought came in 2008, when he went 101 at-bats without a home run. Utley entered yesterday with 11 home runs in 150 games this season; last year he hit 18 home runs in 131 games . . . David Buchanan (6-8, 3.77 ERA) will start the 2014 road finale this afternoon (4:10 p.m., CSN) opposite fellow righthander Tom Koehler (9-10, 3.76). Buchanan has gone 15 consecutive starts of allowing three earned runs or less. In a rotation filled with uncertainty behind Cole Hamels, Buchanan figures to be a front-runner for a starting job next spring.