Say Goodbye to Hollywood: A Tribute to Cole Hamels

Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports

Cole Hamels retired from baseball on Friday, causing significant consternation to people who read that headline and thought they’d been transported back in time to the winter of 2019. (Buy a house now, while you still can, and be sure to stock up on hand sanitizer.)

It’s been four years since Hamels pitched effectively in the major leagues; before the 2020 season, he signed a one-year deal with the Atlanta Braves, and was limited to just 3 1/3 innings by injuries to his triceps and shoulder. Two further comeback attempts, with the Dodgers and his hometown Padres, came to nothing. Hamels never quite recovered from a 2021 surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, and was still unable to throw without pain when he decided, at age 39, that he’d finally had enough.

Hamels, the 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP, will probably appear on just one Hall of Fame ballot. But few players’ reputations suffered more by comparison to their immediate surroundings than Hamels’ did; he was one or two breaks from giving a speech in Cooperstown someday, even if nobody realized it at the time.

Outside of Philadelphia and Texas, where he enjoyed his greatest success, Hamels will be most remembered as a subject of photography. The baseball writer Ted Berg kept an encyclopedic collection of awkward Cole Hamels photos, which was an easy thing to do in the late aughts and early 2010s. Hamels was a first-round pick at 18, a big league debutant at 22, an All-Star and Cy Young contender at 23, and the World Series MVP at 24. He ascended from childhood to national stardom before he grew out of his baby face or ditched his by-then-dated boy band haircut.

But because he was handsome and successful, Hamels ended up starring on billboards and TV commercials. He and his then-wife, a former Survivor contestant, ran a much-publicized charity, and the Hamelses were regulars at an annual fashion show to benefit teammate Shane Victorino’s foundation. In contrast to the laconic Chase Utley, Hamels was outgoing and unafraid of celebrity. His nickname in Philadelphia, “Hollywood,” referenced his Southern California roots and penchant for big-game heroics but never felt more than 90% complimentary.

My favorite image from Hamels’ career is a photo from October 10, 2010. Hamels had just climbed the ladder with a 95 mph fastball to strike out Scott Rolen, the 119th and final pitch in a complete-game shutout that sent the Phillies to the NLCS.

Hamels had a distinctive windup, deliberate and smooth and unmistakably left-handed, the pitcher’s version of Ken Griffey Jr.’s swing. Hamels was a good all-around athlete; he hit .169 for his career, with two triples, two home runs, and a stolen base on his record, and retained those lean, controlled movements well into his mid-30s.

Even at 6-foot-4, and capable of mid-90s velocity when he needed it, Hamels was a finesse pitcher at his core. His best pitch was always his changeup, and he leveled up in his late 20s when he learned a cutter and started mixing it in with his four-seamer; everything worked because of his impeccable command. But while Hamels was as graceful as a sea lion in water on the mound, he could be as ungainly as a sea lion on land off it, as anyone who’s seen him on a catwalk can attest.

The celebration after his complete-game shutout in Cincinnati was the perfect fusion of the two, a herky-jerky fist-pump-and-kick that degaussed three hours of pent-up tension out of him in an instant. I watched this game with a friend in a packed bar in Northeast Philadelphia, and in that moment everyone in the room felt the exact same combination of joy, aggression, and relief Hamels expressed one state over.

It was a masterful performance, the likes of which you simply do not see in postseason baseball anymore, and it got completely swept under the rug because three days earlier Roy Halladay had thrown a no-hitter.

That’s the Hamels story, in a nutshell. Consistently great, frequently clutch, repeatedly overshadowed by someone better.

When Hamels got traded from the Rangers to the Cubs in 2018, he was 34 years old with 47.4 career WAR. Given his command, durability, and refined arsenal, I figured he could continue to be a league-average pitcher until he was 40, maybe even longer. After the trade, he was outstanding for the Cubs, posting a 2.36 ERA in 12 starts toward the end of that season.

He needed just a few more seasons of league-average production to get to the 60-WAR threshold that usually starts a Hall of Fame discussion. If he’d lasted long enough to get there, 200 wins was a possibility, and 3,000 strikeouts a near certainty. At the time, I was preparing a Hall of Fame case that compared Hamels favorably to Tom Glavine. (I admit that you have to really want to see such a comparison, but I had never loved a baseball team as much as Hamels’ Phillies nor hated a baseball team as much as Glavine’s Braves. Suffice it to say, nobody wanted that comparison to work more than I did.)

In the end, it didn’t matter. Maybe if the 2020 season had gone ahead as scheduled, Hamels would have had a normal ramp-up and avoided screwing up his triceps on the eve of the season. And if that hadn’t happened, maybe he doesn’t suffer the shoulder injury that ultimately ended his career. It’s all academic now anyway.

But even if Hamels had hit those key statistical markers, my Glavine comp probably would’ve gotten laughed out of the room. Glavine won two Cy Young Awards; Hamels never finished in the top three. For about a decade, from 2007 to 2016, Hamels was one of the best 10 to 20 starting pitchers in baseball most years. But he was rarely the best pitcher on his own team.

After storming through the postseason in 2008, Hamels took a huge step back in 2009. Or at least he appeared to; his strikeout and walk rates remained about the same. His FIP was exactly the same in 2008 and 2009, down to the hundredth of a run, but Hamels’ ERA jumped from 3.09 to 4.32. At the time, he suffered a precursor to what Aaron Nola’s gone through the past few years — the results are usually good, but frustration at his bad outings outweighed the positives of his good ones.

At the deadline, the Phillies traded for Cliff Lee, another athletic, command-first left-hander who did everything Hamels was good at a little bit better. Lee endeared himself to fans quickly with his attitude of what I’d call aggressive nonchalance, which seemed to convey an attractive self-confidence that Hamels did not possess at that stage of his career.

Relegated to no. 2 starter status after Lee’s arrival, Hamels got hit hard in his first postseason start of 2009. He made the start — and I can barely believe this happened as I’m typing it now — while his wife was going into labor. That outing, in which Hamels allowed four runs in five innings, wasn’t as bad as people remember; the Phillies almost came back to win, in fact. But the contrast to Lee was undeniable.

After getting lit up by the Yankees in Game 3 of the World Series, a weary Hamels told reporters, “I can’t wait for [the season] to end. It’s been mentally draining.” It would’ve been weird, all things considered, for Hamels not to have felt something to that effect at the time, but it was unwise to say so in public, particularly considering that he was lined up to start a potential Game 7. Three days later, teammate Brett Myers accused Hamels of quitting, and the two nearly came to blows in the clubhouse. (Of all the things Hamels has taken crap for over the years, trying to fight Myers has aged the best.)

The arrival of Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt the following season took some of the pressure off Hamels, who came to view Halladay as a mentor. Halladay died suddenly in a plane crash in 2017; one of my most vivid memories of that day was of Hamels, then with the Rangers but still spending his offseason in Philadelphia, coming back to Citizens Bank Park to talk to reporters about his former teammate. Hamels also spoke at Halladay’s public memorial service at the stadium a week later.

After Halladay joined the team, Hamels responded by reeling off seven consecutive seasons of at least 200 innings, at least 194 strikeouts, and an ERA of 3.65 or lower. That took him through the balance of his time in Philadelphia and his first season and a half in Texas. Playoff success followed as well, as Hamels posted a 0.86 ERA across his final three postseason appearances in a Phillies uniform.

Hamels’ reputation among Phillies fans had mostly recovered by the end of the team’s dominant run in 2011, but it was easy to forget just how dominant he’d been in 2008 because in the seasons that followed, Lee and Halladay made such postseason excellence look routine:

Phillies’ Postseason Aces, 2008-11
Player Year GS IP W L ERA FIP K BB AVG OBP SLG
Cole Hamels 2008 5 35 4 0 1.80 2.93 30 9 .190 .244 .281
Cliff Lee 2009 5 40 1/3 4 0 1.56 1.91 33 6 .186 .219 .241
Roy Halladay 2010-11 5 38 3 2 2.34 2.64 35 5 .169 .199 .279

Then, as the 2010s progressed, Madison Bumgarner took the established standard for dominant postseason pitching, picked it up, and swallowed it whole like one of Cronus’ children. No matter what Hamels did, there was always something more impressive to point to.

Hamels wasn’t the last of the championship Phillies to leave; Ryan Howard and Carlos Ruiz lasted a year longer than Hamels did. But he was the only one of the three in anything resembling his prime when the end came. In fact, Hamels’ last appearance in a Phillies uniform was one of his best: a 129-pitch no-hitter at Wrigley Field.

Watching that video, seeing the names who’d replaced Utley, Rollins, Jayson Werth, and so on, drives home how far the Phillies had fallen: 102 wins in 2011, 99 losses just four years later. Hamels joined an up-and-coming Rangers team in need of a playoff-seasoned ace while Yu Darvish recovered from Tommy John surgery.

Hamels obliged, and pitched Texas to within three innings of the franchise’s first playoff series win since 2011. We all remember the wildest inning in baseball history, culminating in José Bautista’s iconic three-run, game-winning home run and bat flip. In typical fashion, Hamels’ role has been overshadowed. He took the mound in the bottom of the seventh with a one-run lead; the Rangers then committed three errors behind him on the first three batters of the inning. The winning run Bautista drove in ended up being an unearned run charged to Hamels.

What are you gonna do? Between Game 5 of the Rangers-Blue Jays series, the weather-suspended Game 5 of the 2008 World Series, and 2018’s NL Wild Card Game, in which Hamels pitched two innings of scoreless relief, Hamels has no shortage of bizarre playoff memories to call on. Had he been healthy enough to stick it out with the Braves in 2020 and 2021, he might have had more. But that’s the what-if of his would-be Hall of Fame case again.

There are two kinds of Hall of Very Good pitchers. The first: Johan Santana, Bret Saberhagen, and arguably Lee as well. These were no-doubt no. 1 starters in their prime, but said prime came up agonizingly short of lasting long enough to bring critical milestones into the conversation. The other: Hamels, Jon Lester, Kevin Appier. These pitchers’ peaks were undeniably high, including multiple All-Star appearances and even some postseason success, but not high enough to pass the Hall of Fame smell test.

Hamels is all but certain to make the team Wall of Fame in Philadelphia, where he had his greatest successes and threw about two thirds of his major league innings. Retiring a jersey number is an honor the team tends to reserve for players who are inducted into Cooperstown, though the club made an exception for Dick Allen after his near-miss in 2015.

Apart from Halladay, who played only two full seasons in Philadelphia, there isn’t a no-doubt Hall of Famer from that five-year run of NL East titles, and nobody from the 2008 championship team. Utley has a bulletproof case, in my opinion, though I fear that BBWAA voters, even now, will underrate a player whose career record relies so heavily on defense and efficiency. Hamels and Rollins don’t have a real case for the Hall of Fame but meant more to the team specifically than the sport generally.

Hamels is fourth in franchise history in WAR among pitchers — behind Steve Carlton, Robin Roberts, and Pete Alexander, all Hall of Famers — and third in strikeouts. Since Carlton left the club in 1986, nobody has thrown more innings in a Phillies uniform. Hamels was the postseason MVP of the franchise’s only championship-winning team since 1980. Numbers get retired for less.

Some players belong to an era other than the one they actually played in. Some players were born 10 years too early or 10 years too late. Or both, in Hamels’ case. He was one of the last pitchers to live up to the expectation that an ace throws 200 innings a year, every year, without fail. His precise, subtle game might not have been appreciated today. For that matter, it might even have been survivable today, such is the quality of the modern major league hitter.

On the other hand, it’s a bit jarring to look back at Hamels’ 2009 season with 2023’s sensibilities. Nowadays, he never would have been asked to pitch that playoff game against Colorado. Public pitching analysis has improved to the point where his up-and-down regular season would’ve been written off as bad luck. And while expressing a public desire to end the season while the World Series hangs in the balance would never have played well, I suspect that had Hamels admitted to feeling mental fatigue in today’s climate, it would’ve gone over better than it did 14 years ago. Even Phillies fans are starting to realize that while giving a player a hard time can be cathartic, and even justified, it isn’t always constructive.

I won’t claim to know how, or even if, baseball history will remember Hamels. He had a great career and was involved in so many important moments. But there’s always a better pitcher out there somewhere.





Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.

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Mike NMN
1 year ago

Good piece. There are a lot of players out there who are very very good, but just not quite at the HOF level. They get attention when they are active, fade into the background very quickly when gone. Hamels had 51.6 FWAR and 59 BWAR. A lot of very good pitchers within roughly 2 of that mark. Pettitte, Buehrle, Saberhagen, Chuck Finley…

MikeSMember since 2020
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike NMN

That’s a Who’s Who of The Hall of the Very Good for a Long Time.

Although I think HoF standards are going to have to change. I don’t think anybody will win 300 games ever again and even 200 wins might be unattainable by anybody after Verlander, Greinke, Sherzer, Kershaw, and (probably) Wainwright retire.

v2miccaMember since 2016
1 year ago
Reply to  MikeS

I mean, I think they already are. Mussina finally getting in felt like one of the first major dominoes to fall. Roy Halladay was inducted with 203 wins (though the timing of his death may have played a role) Of currently active pitchers, Verlander and Kershaw are both likely first ballot inductees and I don’t foresee either one of them cracking the 300 wins threshold. You can see already that the stat of the Pitcher Win is being devalued (or more properly valued) when last year’s Pitching Wins leader Kyle Wright was correctly not considered a front runner for the Cy Young.

mariodegenzgz
1 year ago
Reply to  v2micca

I mean, Mussina won 270 games and struck out almost 3000 batters. He’s one of four pitchers in the live ball era to win 270+ games and have a winning% of at least .638. Also an All-Star many times, Gold Glover, 20-game winner, etc etc. All he missed was a CY, really, for the traditional standards. But he was a perennial top 5 finisher anyway.

Last edited 1 year ago by mariodegenzgz
PC1970Member since 2024
1 year ago
Reply to  mariodegenzgz

Mussina should have been in way earlier, but, he got unfairly pegged as more of a compiler & also was deemed not as good as many peers like Pedro, Clemens, big Unit, Maddux, etc.

Similar to what happened to Blyleven, who was clearly HOF worthy, but, not as good as Seaver, Carlton, etc.

PC1970Member since 2024
1 year ago
Reply to  v2micca

300 wins has never been the HOF threshold, other than for a compiler like Don Sutton.

Only 24 pitchers have 300 wins, but, there are 65 HOF starting pitchers, including guys like Palmer, Jenkins, Blyleven, Feller, Gibson, Marichal, Ford, Drysdale,Pedro, Koufax (165) & many others.

That said, it’s definitely going to go lower..or maybe not considered much at all as we get away from pitcher wins.

You have JC/Kershaw/Scherzer who will all be 1st ballot guys. Greinke should be, too..but, my gut says he may have to wait a few years.

Last edited 1 year ago by PC1970
tung_twista
1 year ago
Reply to  PC1970

“Old school voters care too much about pitcher wins when 300 wins is not a realistic standard for HoFers anymore” is a weird strawman when a quick glance shows that while 300 wins might be a sufficient condition for induction, it is very very far from a necessary condition.
Eight starting pitchers have been voted in by BBWAA in the 21st century and only three of them have 300+ wins.
In several years, with Sabathia’s induction, it will be 3 out of 9.

MikeSMember since 2020
1 year ago
Reply to  v2micca

They definitely are for all those reasons. It may have started as far back as when Felix Hernandez won a Cy Young with a record of 13 – 12 in 2010. I think even the (fewer and fewer) crusty old people that still believe pitching wins are important would agree that the standards will have to change.

What I don’t think people understand is how much they are going to have to change. They are prepared to vote in guys who aren’t anywhere near 300, but are they ready for guys who barely get to 150? Near as I can tell, there are about 70 or 75 starting pitchers in the HoF. The only starters who pitched in the last 100 years and didn’t get at least 189 are Eckersley (149) and Koufax (165). A lot of the reason Eckersley got in was for what he did as a reliever and Koufax was done by age 30 or else he would have gotten at least 200. There are only about 9 or 10 starters in the history of baseball who are in the HoF with less than 200 wins.

carterMember since 2020
1 year ago
Reply to  v2micca

Verlander has said he isn’t considering hanging it up till 45, so I think 300 is certainly a possibility for him.