There’s a good chance that Cole Hamels is the most valuable starter in the Phillies’ vaunted rotation.
It sounds weird, so I’m employing one of my least favorite writing devices — the one sentence paragraph, also known as the Bill Plaschke special — to let that marinate for a minute. How, in a rotation stocked with a future Hall of Famer (Roy Halladay), one of the most dominant starters in the game (Cliff Lee) and … well, ok, I don’t think too many people would rank Roy Oswalt ahead of Hamels, especially given Oswalt’s recent (though unsurprising) injury woes. And, of course, Joe Blanton (and Kyle Kendrick, and Vance Worley) aren’t exactly in the conversation for ‘best starter in the rotation,’ unless you ask … I don’t know, a 2007 version of @FanSince09.
But ANYWAY, Hamels. Whaddya say we take a look at his bona fides?
2011 season to date: 132 IP, 2.32 ERA, 2.43 FIP, 8.25 K/9, 1.64 BB/9, 53% ground ball rate
Career: 3.38 ERA, 3.60 FIP, 8.50 K/9, 2.27 BB/9, 43% ground ball rate
He’s also taken the mound for 32 or more starts in each of the past three seasons, and has 19 at the break this year. It’s impossible to say that he’s officially a Durable Pitcher, since that’s kind of an oxymoron, but he’s certainly not been fragile in his career despite the ‘Hollywood’ nickname that seems to inform much of the dialogue about his career. He’s also basically been a lock for a 4 WAR season in his career … but has accrued 4.1 in just 19 starts this season.
Consider all that, and then chew on this: he’s 27 and heading into the final two months of his contract.
So! What do the Phillies do about him? Open up the checkbook again, as their nearly-$170MM payroll suggests they are wont to do? Or decide that throwing big money at yet another pitcher — Halladay and Lee are both going to be pulling in $20+MM — is too risky?
We know that Hamels is talented enough to command a big contract. We don’t know, though, that the team can afford him. Here’s how their payroll situation breaks down for next year:
Expiring contracts: Roy Oswalt ($16MM, $2MM buyout), Raul Ibanez ($11.5MM), Brad Lidge ($11.5MM, $1.5MM buyout), Hamels ($9.5MM), Jimmy Rollins ($8.5MM), Ryan Madson ($4.5MM), Danys Baez ($2.75MM), Kyle Kendrick ($2.45MM), Brian Schneider ($1.5MM), Ross Gload ($1.6MM), Pete Orr ($0.6MM)
I don’t think that the Phillies would buy Oswalt out, since they’re not likely to retain him on a more favorable deal than 1 year, $16MM. That means that the Phillies, by dint of expiring contracts, will have $52.9MM to play with.
Of course, there then the built-in expenses to consider. Cliff Lee is getting a $10.5MM bump in salary, which takes away a big chunk of available change. Shane Victorino is set to make $2MM more, and Placido Polanco and Carlos Ruiz are both going to make another $1MM. I figure that Ben Francisco is going to get another million or two in arbitration, and it’s a reasonable bet that Wilson Valdez is brought back on another minimum contract (which is why I didn’t list him in the expiring contracts above). Plus Antonio Bastardo, John Mayberry, Jr and Domonic Brown are all going to get small pay increases.
So now we’re looking at $43MM of free money, which will certainly make you popular in the club. The Phillies have increased spending by ~$25MM in each of the past two offseasons, but it’s not instructive to look only at that and say that they’re going to continue to spend like drunken sailors — they’re going to have Ryan Howard’s massive contract extension kicking in next season (though his salary will remain constant at $20MM next year), and will have five players (Halladay, Lee, Oswalt, Utley, Howard) earning at least $15MM next season. I’d expect Hamels to join that club, but realistically, how much money are we looking at here?
A look at his comparables on Baseball-Reference wouldn’t get Hamels’ agent very excited. Jered Weaver is making $7MM in his second year of arbitration, Chad Billingsley signed a team-friendly 3 year, $35MM deal in the offseason, Jon Lester signed an even more team-friendly 5 year, $30MM deal, and Ubaldo Jimenez is going to be finishing out the final year of a ridiculously team-friendly 4-year, $10MM deal. The big difference, of course, is that Hamels is going to be an unrestricted free agent; Weaver’s got another year of team control, and Billingsley, Lester and Jimenez each signed away arb years in exchange for security.
Given, then, that the Phillies won’t be getting a similar discount — and pipe down, if you’re about to tell me that they got a discount with Cliff Lee, because they didn’t; the average annual value of his contract is higher in Philly than it would’ve been in Texas or New York — with Hamels, let’s look at his performance. If we say that Hamels is a 5-WAR pitcher (not unreasonable, since he’s on pace to shatter that in his age-27 season) and that the free agent market will again bear ~$5MM/WAR, as it did last offseason, then we’re talking about at least a $20MM AAV, which for the Phillies is basically like handing him an $11.5MM/year extension (since he’s already making $9.5MM).
So let’s assume that Hamels could reasonably get 5 years and $110MM. That would make him, at $22MM, the highest-paid pitcher in AAV on the Phillies, which I suspect would rub a lot of folks the wrong way. But I’ll tell you what: I think the Phillies need to shell out that cash.
Yes, it’s risky. But the Phillies are a team in flux right now; the lineup is not what it used to be, as Howard, Utley and Rollins are all on the downswing, and as much as Shane Victorino has picked up the slack this season, he’s going to be a 32-year old center fielder next year. In the absence of an impact free agent LF, that means that the Phils are going to depend on an aging Victorino and a pre-ripe Dom Brown to provide the kind of offense for which you can’t depend on the old core anymore.
Of course, the flip side to that is that they’re banking on pitching when only one of their top four starters will be younger than 33. The Phillies are a team caught between the glory days of the past and the detritus that leaves behind, with aging players all over the field and a fairly thin cast of prospects on the way from the farm. They need to cast their lot with either pitching or offense, and signing Hamels not only leaves them with three Cy Young contenders but also means they don’t have throw big bucks into an uninspiring free agent class for offensive upgrades.
