Archive for Cole Hamels

On October 27, 2008, I lay sprawled on the carpet in front of the television, watching as Cole Hamels twirled yet another postseason masterpiece. My new puppy sat calmly by my side, having finally learned the rally towel was my toy, not his. Hamels pitched six innings that night; he could have gone deeper were it not for a 48-hour rain delay, but his efforts proved to be enough. Two days later, I was jumping with joy into my father’s arms as Hamels clutched the World Series trophy in his.

Fifteen years later, the living room carpet is long gone. The TV remains, although it’s wildly out of date. That new puppy is now officially geriatric, with greying fur and two bad hips. My father would prefer I no longer jump into his arms; he gets enough of a workout carrying our 50-pound dog up and down the stairs.

Forty different players took the field for the Phillies in 2008. Thirty-nine have since retired. Hamels, however, isn’t quite ready to submit to the passage of time. On Thursday afternoon, the veteran left-hander signed a minor league deal with the Padres and will head to Peoria as a non-roster invitee, hoping to make his way back to the big leagues at 39 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

Zack Greinke is one of the best pitchers in major league baseball, and as a result, he had no shortage of suitors before ultimately signing a contract in excess of $200 million. In addition to money, the Diamondbacks also surrendered their first-round pick next year, the 13th overall selection. While it would not be quite true to say that Greinke cost “only money,” the Diamondbacks did not give up a single active player in order to acquire Greinke.

Cole Hamels, both the same age as Greinke and roughly as effective over the course of his career, was traded over the summer. Hamels’ cost was not “only money,” as the Texas Rangers gave up six players, including three high-end prospects (and Matt Harrison’s contract), for Jake Diekman and the opportunity to pay Cole Hamels around $100 million over the next four years. While the costs come in different forms, we can compare the two to see how the trade market this past summer compared to this offseason’s free agent market for Greinke.

The Los Angeles Dodgers prioritized Cole Hamels at the trade deadline, but subsequently missed out by refusing to part with their best prospects. The team then prioritized bringing Greinke back, only to be outbid by division rival Arizona. The cost for both players was high, and it is difficult to say whether the Dodgers made a mistake passing on both players, but we should be able to compare the costs for both to see if the Dodgers could have kept a comparable pitcher for less than the amount Greinke received in free agency.

As far as comparisons go, Greinke did have a better year in 2015, but their cumulative WAR graphs (shown below) reveal two remarkably similar careers in terms of value.

In addition, both players are projected to do well next season. By Steamer, Greinke is set for a 4.2 WAR while Hamels comes in a bit behind at 3.6 WAR for the 2016 season. Using those projections as the baseline for future production, we can get an estimate for their value over the next few years. With deferrals, Greinke’s deal turns out to be $194.5 million over six seasons, per Ken Rosenthal. Given the consistency of both Greinke and Hamels, for the purposes of this analysis, we will assume the players will age well.

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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.

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Between the All-Star break and the trade deadline, most starting pitchers make only a couple starts. For starting pitchers who could be on the move, the small timeframe places those starts under a microscope for those anticipating a trade. Teams wanting to trade for the starter want to ensure that they are getting a pitcher at the peak of his abilities to help with the last few months of the regular season and potentially the playoffs. For the best two starting pitchers on the market, Johnny Cueto and Cole Hamels, recent performance has begun to raise questions about their trade value. Whether recent performances have hurt their trade value is debatable, but we can look over the past few seasons and determine whether other pitchers have gone through a dip in performance prior to a trade and compare that performance after the trade.

Some have asserted that Hamels’ last two starts hurt his trade value. While he has given up 14 runs in less than seven combined innings in his last two starts, his underlying stuff (which is great) has not been affected, there was an extended layoff between the two starts due to the All-Star break, and in the outing prior to those starts, Hamels threw seven shutout innings with six strikeouts against no walks. Hamels does have a 3.91 ERA this season, but his 3.37 FIP is still in line with his stellar career numbers.

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The Philadelphia Phillies aren’t accustomed to hovering around the .500 mark, let alone falling on the wrong side of it. Winners of five straight division titles, the team and its core members are used to playing solid baseball and firming up grasps on playoff berths. Throughout this recent run of success, the front office has used the trade deadline to bolster the roster, fix a glaring weakness, or just strengthen an area not previously considered an outright strength. All the while there was never substantial doubt that they would contend.

The situation may play out differently this season, as the Phillies are now 29-33, four games under .500, and eight games behind the first-place Washington Nationals.

While their struggles were somewhat predictable given the extended absences of Chase Utley and Ryan Howard — which were known before the season — and the in-season injuries to Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Vance Worley, Carlos Ruiz, Jim Thome and Laynce Nix, the fact remains that the team isn’t playing good baseball and doesn’t really seem primed to right the ship.

With a number of roster decisions on the horizon, their play of late has raised questions about when the team should legitimately consider selling off assets in an attempt to replenish a depleted farm system and regroup for next year. Seeing that they are eight games behind the Nationals and 6.5 games behind the second wild card team, that time may be fast approaching.

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So here’s what we know:
1) Bryce Harper, a phenomenally talented 19 year old who also occasionally does annoying things, got plunked by Cole Hamels on May 6.
2) Cole Hamels admitted doing it on purpose, “to continue the old baseball… that old-school prestigious way of baseball.”

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Perhaps the story of the Phillies in ye old National League Championship Series of 2010 is the story of missed opportunities at the plate. We know how poor of a statistic batting average is, but Ryan Howard was the only regular to top .261, so the bats weren’t hot. The entire team put up a .216/.311/.321 line, which is somewhere between “that’s disappointing” and “OMGz, trade that bum Chase Utley (.182/.333/.227) like yesterday” depending on your current state of mind. A team that hit .260/.332/.413 during the season didn’t come close to equaling that production in a six-game stretch. It happens, and it seems there’s no reason to slice and dice that sample any smaller.

Or maybe there is. Because we’ve talked about this team’s struggles against lefthanders at times. Looking at the series as a whole, though, the Phillies managed “only” 10 runs, 18 hits (7 extra base) and 9 walks in 21 innings against lefties. Perhaps we only remember the high-profile strikeouts – and the Giants’ LHPs did strike out 23 in those 21 innings. Even if we think the overall line overstates the case and want to consider the leverage index of all those Javier Lopez outings, in particular, he only averaged a 1.4 LI while compiling that 2.08 ERA and getting those 13 outs. Impressive? Yes. Higher-than-average pressure in those situations? Yes. The reason the Phillies lost the series? Hardly. The Phillies had chances and we obviously can’t blame their lack of offense all on their overall performance against lefties.

The word going in was that even if the Phillies offense was going to have a little trouble with this staff, their own pitching staff would easily neutralize the poor Giants offense. After all, the Giants were the only playoff team with a below-average wOBA and the Phillies had Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels. That trio didn’t perform poorly – they pitched 33 innings and allowed 13 runs, striking out 34 against only six walks. Perhaps more was expected of Roy Halladay after his no-hitter in the first round, but he did strain that groin and you don’t point at three pitchers that pitched 65% of your innings to a 3.27 ERA and say, there, that’s your problem right there.

The bullpen? 13 innings, three runs. The defense? Four errors to the Giants’ three – and even if you want to say errors are a poor gauge of defense, you’d have to admit they played about even on the field in that regard. Timely hitting? Sure, but what can you really do about that, and how much of that is the short sample? Want to blame Ryan Howard just ’cause? Check Dave Cameron’s defense.

It was a tight series. Javier Lopez certainly helped the Giants, and the San Francisco staff deserves some credit for keeping a good offense down. Play this series a million times, though, and the Philadelphia squad probably wins close to half of ’em. The Phillies didn’t play terribly and don’t have an obvious scapegoat going into the offseason, so all they can do is find a way to replace Jayson Werth if he leaves (preferably with a right-handed bat), rework the bullpen as good teams do every offseason, and give it another shot next year.

Cody Ross isn’t bald, he just emits Awesome from his head. – chatter Tony
Cody Ross is the answer to every question. – chatter TexasRanger

Ah, but this is the Philly review, so that will be enough of the Ross love here. Which is good, because we don’t have to cover the Great Bruce Bochy Lineup Disaster either, especially since it turned out okay for the Giants. Instead, we’ll reach back into the chat to find a couple quotes that offered real-time feedback on Ted Barrett’s strike zone:

Aren’t you noticing a completely different strike zone being called for both pitchers in this game. Matt Cain is getting inside, outside, and low. Have not seen those same pitches call for Cole Hamels – chatter T Barrett
Maybe the complaints are based on when Cole get squeezed rather than quantity. The non-strike 3 to Sanchez was a big call (like Halladay’s against Burrell in game 1). – chatter Andy

So we turn to the pictures – from Brooks Baseball – to try and get the full story:

At first glance, there’s reason to doubt Barret’s zone. There are five clear strikes on the outside the zone for the Giants, and only two that are as far outside the zone for the Phillies. If we count all of the “wrong” calls inside and out, we get eight called strikes that weren’t strikes and four strikes that were not called strikes for the Giants. Then there’s four called strikes that weren’t strikes and five strikes that weren’t called for the Phillies. It’s the sort of thing that seems both real and yet somehow not completely significant. But a lot of this is in the eye of the beholder, as these chat responses to the posted strike zone show:

looks pretty even to me – chatter Evan
Whole camels could fit inside Cain’s sz – chatter bowie
mostly shows me that cain did a better job of hitting that left side of the zone. he peppered a lot of pitches very close to the line – chatter Giants

Ah-hah. The truth is in the eye of the beholder often, but let’s try to say something true about this game: “Though the strike zone may have favored the Giants in a slight way and put pressure on Cole Hamels in key moments, the game was won by timely hitting by the Giants and the failure of the Phillies’ batters to come through in similarly tough situations.” You can quote me on that.

Let’s end this with a look at the highest leverage moments in the game, and the results of the at-bat.

I’ll admit it: I lost this debate to the inimitable Carson Cistulli. What can I say, I was no master debater back in the day, nor had I ever tried the Lincoln-Douglas format. Excuses, excuses, excuses. I know.

What was so flustering was that the Phillies felt like the right pick. But when the numbers were parsed, there were few numbers that were definitively in favor of the team from Philadelphia. Carson was right – overall WAR, UZR, wOBA, they all pointed towards Dusty Baker’s team. I was forced to tickle the numbers until they laughed the right name, and was called out on it. The strange thing? Perhaps the actual, you know, real-life games proved me correct.

Let’s review my seemingly untenable positions:

1) The Phillies’ starting rotation is too strong for the Reds.
Well, like, duh. Not only did all the numbers show it before they played, but their performances did as well. Three games and the new Big Three produced 23 innings, 4 runs allowed (3 earned), 22 strikeouts, 2 walks, and 30/18 groundballs to flyballs. That’s “pretty good,” and it minimized the edge the Reds had in the pen. This edge probably was enough to ignore many of the other edges that went Red, but it’s unclear why that would be, given the pie chart that goes into every game. More on that later.

2) The Phillies’ lineup is deeper.
Defining something like ‘deeper’ is tough, but it does seem that the Phillies lineup was more balanced. Facing Raul Ibanez and Carlos Ruiz as the seventh and eighth hitters is far less exciting than facing Orlando Cabrera and either of the Reds’ catchers, right? Philadelphia hit .212 for the series, and the Reds .124. Batting average isn’t a great indicator of course, but in this case it does a quick-and-dirty job of portraying the differences between the teams’ lineups and how they fared in this short series. But again, bullet point one is probably at fault here.

3) The Phillies’ bullpen is better, specifically at closer.
Well, this one didn’t necessarily go my way, but only because the Phillies’ starters didn’t give em much of a chance to show their mettle. They pitched 4 innings total in the three games, and allowed no runs and 1 hit, with 2 strikeouts and 2 walks. The Reds? 10 innings with 4 runs, (1 earned), 8 hits, 7 strikeouts and 4 walks. Advantage; some shade red, but mostly made irrelevant by bullet point one.

The last idea, and it probably doesn’t deserve a bullet point because it’s not something rooted in fancy baubles like “theory” or “proof,” held that perhaps the Phillies owned the star power over the Reds. (Another possibly un-definable term in my favor? Awesome.) But we’ve now seen Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels shine bright while Roy Oswalt, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard got the job done – and on the other side of the ledger, the Reds failed to receive a singular, extraordinary performance from any of their main players. It’s not very ‘Sabre’ to say this, but is it possible that in the slimmed-down post-season things like a deep roster, good defensive pieces and nice middle relief become a little less impressive or important?

Oh, the game? Well, the game was all Hamels. There’s not much else to say when he’s got the changeup dancing like that. That, some good defensive play from Shane Victorino, and a solo home run from Utley, and you’ve basically got enough to say “ballgame” and “series.”

Dusty Baker got seven innings with one earned run (two total) by using Johnny Cueto and Homer Bailey just about perfectly, and made the most of his bullpen the rest of the way – and still lost. Though the Reds lineup may have showed better regular-season wOBAs, in this small sample, only Brandon Phillips and Jay Bruce were able to bat above the Mendoza line. Baker may have made some bad tactical moves over the series, and Dave may yet come with some heat in that area, but it seems the players played out this best-of-five and the Reds came up short. It was still a great year for them and they should be proud of the larger sample size.

During the off-season, Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels made an effort to become a new type of pitcher, opening his arsenal to more weapons in hopes of sustaining long-term success. He decided to incorporate a steady serving of curveballs and cutters into his healthy diet of fastballs and changeups, and so far the relatively superficial stats seem to be generally supportive of the process:

2008: 3.72 FIP, 3.63 xFIP, 4.26 tERA, 7.76 K/9, 2.10 BB/9
2009: 3.72 FIP, 3.69 xFIP, 4.15 tERA, 7.81 K/9, 2.00 BB/9
2010: 4.21 FIP, 3.66 xFIP , 4.38 tERA, 8.94 K/9, 2.98 BB/9

After a career-low walk rate last year, Cole has dropped to a walk rate worse than as any season since his rookie year by a significant margin. Still, his strikeouts are way up and it seems that his biggest issue in terms of performance has been the quality of his balls in play. His HR/FB rate is at a career-high 14.6%, as Cole has given up more homers per fly than the average pitcher each year in the big leagues. His groundball rate, however, is a career-high at 44.1%, but that may have more to do with a LD rate of 18.1%, which is as low as it has been since 2006.

But our run value charts show that Hamels’ cutter has been a bad pitch for him, coming in at -4.3 RAA, compared to 5.3 for his fastball and 3.1 for this changeup. His curveball has been basically an average pitch at -0.1. Pitchf/x guru Harry Pavlidis at The Hardball Times discussed Hamels’ new repetoire and did a fantastic job breaking down the lefty’s performance in a two-part series using his rvERAa and rvERAe stats, eventually concluding:

-An increased rate of flies and liners turning into home runs is observed when Hamels adds a fourth pitch heavily to the mix. Coincidence?

-While the fastball and sinker may or may not have been compatible, the cutter and the fastball may be

-The jury is still out on the cutter, but the sinker is welcome to stay away

-His change-up is very good, it’s a shame it’s used less and less

-His curveball I can take or leave. As a commentor noted in part one, it’s more of a show-me pitch than anything

My vote: keep working on the cutter, but have some more faith in the change-up.

Using the Bloomberg Sports Pro Tool, I wanted to take a look specifically at Hamels’ cutter, which Harry suggests he should tune up even though the metrics say it has stunk. Here’s a look at the forty-seven cutters Hamels has thrown to lefties this season along with their corresponding location in play if they were hit for an out/base:

As you can see, Hamels has thrown his cutters mostly away to lefties in the limited time he has tried it, and so far the results are good. Lefties have yet to get a hit against the pitch, either grounding out or flying out each time. But here are the images for right-handed hitters:

Righties are simply crushing Hamels’ cutter this season. He’s thrown it 120 times against them in 2010, and thus far they’re hitting .412/.429/.882, which simply will not get the job done. His cutter has also averaged 88.8 MPH to righties while only 88.1 MPH to lefties, so it may just look and act like a flat fastball to righties, who have taken advantage of it. As you can tell from the last image, his HR/FB rate on the year has clearly taken a hit due to his cutter versus right-handers.

I agree with Harry’s ultimate conclusion that Hamels should continue to work on his cutter. But until Hamels has a firm grasp of it, he should toy with it versus lefties and only versus righties in games with an extremely low leverage index (i.e. big leads). Until then, it will continue to get hit far.