Hamels Goes Out on Top?

Even if it were not the most important game of his life, Cole Hamels’ might have just pitched the very best game of his life on Saturday, a potentially fitting end to a fantastic Philadelphia Phillies career. Hamels has started 13 playoff games, including three in the World Series. He put together a 3.20 ERA and 3.51 FIP in over 80 innings of postseason work. Five times Hamels has pitched the opening game in a playoff series and his team has won the last four. He won the World Series MVP for the champion Phillies in 2008 after starting two of the games and pitching 35 innings during that postseason. In 2010, he clinched a series against Johnny Cueto and the Reds with a shutout. So no, Cole Hamels’ start on Saturday was nowhere near the most important start of his career, but it might have been the best and it might have been the last. If Hamels is traded, he left the team nearly a decade after he started, and he provided one final memory in a career that already had plenty to begin with.

The Phillies called Hamels up early on in 2006, and by 2007 he was the ace of a staff that would help the Phillies to five straight division titles. In 2010, the team added Roy Halladay, and in 2011 it was Cliff Lee, although those additions could not top the World Series win in 2008, nor the appearance in 2009. After the run of division titles ended following 2012, injuries and age caught up to Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee, with stars Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins also in decline, but Hamels kept pitching well as the losses piled up in Philadelphia.

Cole Hamels, Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, and David Price are the only pitchers to produce at least four wins above replacement in every season since 2011 and Hamels looks well on his way to extending the streak to five years. Since his debut in 2006, Hamels’ 39.7 WAR is eighth among all pitchers and only Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander, and Felix Hernandez have more wins all for the same team. If Hamels has made his last pitch for the Phillies, his numbers will remain very high on team leaderboards. He is just 27 strikeouts behind Robin Roberts for second place all-time behind Steve Carlton in a Phillies uniform. His 1,930 innings and 114 wins both rank sixth, just 10 innings and a couple wins away from the top five in each. He has more postseason strikeouts than Carlton in eight fewer innings. In the last 100 years, only Steve Carlton and Robin Roberts have a greater WAR than Hamels, and it took Roberts nearly twice as many innings to produce 50% more wins.

Even after his initial success in the majors, Hamels made attempts to better himself as a pitcher. A two-pitch pitcher for the first four years of his career, Hamels relied on his fastball and change around 90% of the time during those years, mixing in the occasional curve. He added a cutter to his arsenal a few years back and increased the velocity on his curve to make him a more complete pitcher. He used all of his pitches on Saturday in the no-hitter against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, ending the longest team streak in baseball without a no-hitter at 7,920 games and just short of fifty years.

Hamels’ fastball, which he has used less than 50% of the time on the season, was used for less than a third of his pitches against the Cubs, despite hitting 96 mph in the ninth inning on his 123rd pitch of the game:

Eno Sarris wrote about the increased velocity on the curve and how it helped Hamels against lefthanders. The curve was on display against Kris Bryant:

Hamels’ best pitch has always been the change, and it was no different against the Cubs, getting 13 swings and misses out of 34 pitches, an absurd 38% whiff rate, per Brooks Baseball. In the seventh inning, Hamels struck out the side, getting all three hitters to swing and miss on the change for the third strike, including the normally excellent Anthony Rizzo, who looks foolish on this swing:

Hamels has always posted solid strikeout numbers, but he has never completed a season with strikeout rate above 25% such as he currently possesses. His career high for strikeouts in a game is 15, which he set in 2007, and prior to Saturday, it was the only one of his 13 complete games where Hamels had produced double-digit strikeouts. This was Hamels’ seventh shutout, and he had six or fewer strikeouts in five of those games. Hamels induced 24 swings and misses in the game, with only Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, and Carlos Carrasco posting higher totals this season.

Much was made over Hamels’ previous two starts, over the course of which he pitched a little over six innings total and gave up more than five runs in both games. If organizations were downgrading Hamels’ trade value and ignoring his track record, hopefully this start was a reminder not to foolishly put too much stock in so few innings. This is actually the third consecutive year that Hamels has had consecutive games giving up five runs or more, and this is the third consecutive year he has rebounded. If the Phillies are receiving better offers for Hamels’ services after the no-hitter, the likely cause is not the no-hitter, but that Hamels has been an incredibly consistent, productive pitcher with a contract that is both short and reasonable, allowing teams to pursue contention now and in the future.

Hamels ended his historic no-hitter with 13 strikeouts against just two walks, but the game did not end on a strikeout, but rather a deep fly ball to center that was not without some theatrics. This was Hamels’ view as he walked off the mound, quite possibly for the last time as a member of the Phillies.

He did not keep walking off the field for we are not dealing in fiction. He stopped, he smiled, and he celebrated with his Phillies’ teammates, perhaps for the last time.