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Feb 21, 2012 - Cole Hamels is going to make $15 million this season.
That's a lot for a pitcher who's not yet been eligible for free agency. It's about what his talent suggests, though. While Hamels is perhaps overrated a little -- over the last three seasons, he's been roughly as effective as Gavin Floyd and Edwin Jackson -- he's really good and he's been really durable. He might not get a lot more money per year in his next deal, but there will be plenty of years on that deal if he wants them.
And that's going to happen fairly soon, as Hamels may become a free agent after this season. Which of course sets all sorts of hearts atwitter with speculation. Via Tyler Kepner, here's the man himself:
"Ever since I’ve been here, they’ve been able to do a really good job of keeping the guys that they draft, especially the guys that they like," Hamels said Monday. "I just hope I’m one of those guys that they like."
Of course they do. In six regular seasons, Hamels is 74-54 with a 3.39 earned run average. In five postseasons, his numbers have been even better. He is part of the reason the Phillies are more popular than ever, with more than 3.1 million tickets sold before the first full-squad workout of spring training.
Hamels said he would not set a deadline for a contract extension, leaving the details to John Boggs, his agent. Boggs represented Tony Gwynn, who stayed in San Diego his whole career. The Phillies know the idea appeals to Hamels.
The Phillies owe Ryan Howard $125 million.
I don't know, but that seems like a lot. Probably not enough, though, to keep them from locking up Hamels for a good long while, because the Phillies seem to have a bottomless bank vault filled with big heavy bags of money.
But you know, if the Phillies do have that big pile of money, they might as well wait a while before shoveling some of it toward Hamels. Considering how consistent he's been in his career, there's little reason to think he'll be worth significantly more a year from now than today. If the Phillies wait, they'll have one more year of evidence about Hamels' ability to stay healthy and make 30-some starts. And they'll still be able to afford him, probably.
If they can't afford him, we'll have a good laugh about the Ryan Howard contract and feel quite smug.
9 comments
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Comments
Floyd and Jackson?
Rob, care to explain how you came up with those two as Hamels’ comps?
Even aside from the matter of “last three seasons” being the least favorable way to view Hamels, based on his 2009 being lackluster, I still don’t see Floyd and Jackson as the appropriate comps for 2009-2011.
by Lukehart80 on Feb 21, 2012 8:29 PM EST reply actions
FanGraphs' custom leaderboards sorted for Hamels, Floyd and Jackson, 2009 to 2011:
here
by SeanP on Feb 21, 2012 10:16 PM EST up reply actions
Ah yes. Thanks for the link
And fair enough, but I still think that’s stacking the deck as far against Hamels as you can, as B-R’s WAR is far more favorable to Hamels, as is any set of years other than 2009-2011 (either 2010-2011 or 2008-2011 send Hamels up the list). You could just as easily say he’s been one of the three best pitchers in the National League the last couple seasons.
And mentioning Floyd and Jackson makes it sound like Hamels isn’t an ace, when even by those Fangraph numbers, making the worst case possible for him, he’s in the top 20. I don’t believe Rob actually thinks those two are the best comps for Hamels, which makes it something of a cheat to use them to make a point.
by Lukehart80 on Feb 21, 2012 11:27 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
Fangraphs WAR for pitchers is goofy
Hamels beats Floyd in wins, ERA, innings, K/9, fewer BB/9, K/BB, FIP, and xFIP, mostly by a fair margin. But Floyd has a better WAR. I don’t see how that makes sense. He also beats Jackson fairly easily in all those things except innings. The fact that fWAR has Hamels about as good as Jackson and floyd says more about the quality of the stat than the relative quality of the three pitchers.
by Stephen Suffron on Feb 22, 2012 10:37 AM EST up reply actions
Keep in mind that WAR is league-adjusted.
Floyd had to face DHs while Hamels got to deal with pitchers batting.
by thepartybird on Feb 22, 2012 12:52 PM EST up reply actions
It's a matter of preference.
I like fWAR for pitchers because it says to me, “There are a bunch of things that we don’t know about pitchers, but we do have these three stats – K, BB and HR rates – that have good year-to-year correlations, so we can safely say that pitchers have a lot of control over these three things. Let’s remove the defense from the picture so that we’re just looking at the things that the pitcher controls. If we use historical data and linear weights, we can assign run values to these stats to get a pretty good picture of how pitchers helped (or hurt) their teams over a given number of innings.” FanGraphs doesn’t claim that their version of WAR is perfect (Dave Cameron wrote two articles about WAR and how it could improve: Part 1 and Part 2), but they do feel confident in the numbers that they use to calculate their WAR, and they believe that it does a good job of valuing populations of pitchers.
Rally WAR worries me because it uses defensive statistics to try to subtract the defense from the equation. It’s a good idea, and it’s probably a good direction for WAR to take in the future. But I’m just not confident enough in our current defensive statistics to trust rWAR. Maybe if we ever see FIELDf/x data, we’ll be able to come up with better defensive stats, and use them to improve WAR. But, for now, I’m pretty wary of rWAR.
I think that it’s like the difference between precision and accuracy. FanGraphs WAR might not hit the target every time but it’s very consistent. Rally WAR might have some shots that are way off the mark but, overall, it’s centered around the middle.
by SeanP on Feb 22, 2012 10:24 PM EST up reply actions
$20M
I think you are way off on his value Rob, I’m betting he is aiming for, and will get $20M/year next season for a minimum of 5 years.
by Lonnie49 on Feb 21, 2012 10:16 PM EST reply actions
Hamels Comps
I love ya Rob. But Floyd and Jackson? Good solid starters. But I’m not sure any measurement would rank them with Hamels.
by dedcds on Feb 22, 2012 3:15 PM EST reply actions
I didn't look at this in detail
And maybe this comment doesn’t apply to this article. But it seems a lot of baseball writers (even those who know A LOT about baseball) cherry pick statistics that even they probably don’t really believe are applicable or important, in order to make a bigger impression in their article. And they are almost always called on it.
For me, the result of that is that I just don’t have as much faith in that writer in the future. If I knew how to say “writer, beware” in Latin, I would ;-)
by Craig from Az on Feb 22, 2012 4:43 PM EST reply actions
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