Category Archives: Cole Hamels

Look Out, World: Here Come the Dodgers

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It’s been almost exactly 24 hours since news broke of the Guggenheim group being selected by Frank McCourt, and as you can imagine, the day has been filled with plenty of discussion about debt, parking lots, and revenue sources – and rightfully so.

Those are all eminently worthwhile discussion topics, and believe me, we’ll have plenty of time to get deeply into all of that in the coming weeks. But here’s what else we’ve learned over the last day; after years of watching this team bottomfeed for the Chris Capuanos and Juan Riveras of the world rather than get in on the big fish, observers of other teams are absolutely terrified of what the Dodgers are going to be able to do next winter.

Adam Moore, Lone Star Ball:

The Dodgers’ outfield currently consists of Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, and a black hole. Ethier is a free agent after the season. Hamilton is one of the most marketable and popular players in the game right now. And the Dodgers will have money to spend.

You think Magic might be at Hamilton’s house at 12:01 a.m. on the first day of free agency this year? You think new ownership might be willing to offer the type of “Jayson Werth contract” — 7 years, $126 million — that Hamilton is supposed saying is a starting point on a new deal, and that the Rangers aren’t going to come close to matching?

Most likely, this is Josh Hamilton‘s last season in Texas. I expect next year at this time, he’ll be wearing Dodger blue.

For the record, I absolutely do not want to give Josh Hamilton a 7/$126m deal or anything like it.

Jim Kozimor, CSN Bay Area:

If I’m a Giants fan, I’m nervous. Here’s why:
- If someone spends that kind of money for a baseball team it’s not just a trinket they can hold. They want to play with it.
- Long term, the Giants are now pitted against a Yankees-like financial powerhouse.
- Of more immediate concern: L.A. has to be considered a player in the Matt Cain Sweepstakes.

Henry Schulman, San Francisco Gate:

I can’t begin to guess whether this will make it harder for the Giants to sign Cain, either now or next fall. But there is no question he has the Giants over a barrel now. That does not mean the Giants should hand Cain a blank contract and let him fill in the figure. But if Cain wants something approaching market value to sign now, the Giants are probably going to have spend above their comfort level. Will they do it? I still think they will.

Remember, the man at the helm now, Larry Baer, is a marketing man. Surely he understands the wrath that the ticket-buyers will feel if the Giants do not make a competitive offer and let him walk, especially if he walks into Chavez Ravine.

Kevin Cooney, Phils-ville:

You don’t spend that type of money and then suddenly decide to go cheap. And in a town where the Dodgers brand name was king at one point, Johnson now brings instant credibility to both fans and potential free agents. And while Stan Kasten will be the baseball guy running the show and there will be others with bigger financial stakes, Johnson – who has made a fortune after his career in various business interest – is the drawing card.

And how would this impact the Phillies? Well, let’s start with a certain left-handed starting pitcher.

Lost in the injury din of the lost spring in Clearwater has been the fact that things on the Cole Hamels front have been extremely quiet. John Boggs came into town for a few days, but progress has not been reported.

Hey, who knows how many of these guys ever make it to the market, or if we even want them. But for once, it seems that the Dodgers might actually be in the market for top players rather than simply those who fall into their limited payroll structure. Other teams are already taking notice. Is it wrong to be looking forward to the 2012-13 offseason more than the 2012 season itself?

Halloween Random Post: Cole Hamels Hates Grenades

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This has nothing to do with the Dodgers, is only tangentially baseball-related, and will only be funny to people like me who play first-person shooters like Call of Duty (and to top it off, has some NSFW language), but screw it: it’s a Halloween Saturday afternoon, and our team isn’t playing in tonight’s World Series Game 3. What better time?

Update: now with working video!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUSmbfwFZBc]

NLCS Game 5: I Swear There’s Reasons to Watch

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All over the series of tubes, you’ve been hearing variations of the same thing – namely, that the Game 4 collapse and 3-1 series deficit means that the NLCS is over and that the Phillies should start preparing for the Yankees right now, especially with castoff Vicente Padilla going tonight against gilded World Series hero Cole Hamels.

And you know what? “They” are probably right. Things look bleak for the Dodgers, and the bandwagon is ripe for piling on. (Except for you, Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports. A column bashing Manny for the shower non-story and a column calling Joe Torre a fraud in the same day? Talk about setting the anti-Dodger bar pretty high, comrade. But hey, congratulations on being the last person alive to finally realize that a manager’s record is mainly based on the talent of the roster he’s been provided with.) 

So I can’t say I have a whole lot of confidence that the Dodgers are going to somehow wake up and beat Hamels, Pedro Martinez, and Cliff Lee in three straight, because I just don’t see it. But while things look bleak, there’s reason to keep an open mind for tonight’s game…

1) Cole Hamels is not the ace you think he is.

Hey, remember Cole Hamels’ whirlwhind 2008? 142 ERA+, led the league in WHIP, went 4-0 in 5 dominating starts en route to leading the Phillies to the World Series?

Yeah, that guy’s left, and he’s not coming back. You see, 2009 Cole Hamels has been, well, mediocre. From Ben Bolch’s LA Times story:

“This year has been a lot tougher,” Hamels said Tuesday before the Phillies worked out at Citizens Bank Park. “Things really haven’t gone the way that I’ve wanted.”

The left-hander went 10-11 — his first losing record in four major league seasons — with a 4.32 earned-run average, more than a run higher than it was in 2008. His struggles carried over into the postseason, where he has failed to survive the sixth inning in either of his starts.

Remember, even though he got the win in Game 1 of this NLCS, it wasn’t really due to any strong performance from him. He lasted just 5.1 IP, allowing 8 hits and 4 runs (2 homers), and the only reason that wasn’t a bigger story was because Joe Torre allowed Clayton Kershaw to roast on the mound before George Sherrill really laid the gas can on the fire.

Forget what he did in 2008. The Hamels of 2009 can be had, and the Dodgers were able to touch him in Game 1. No reason they can’t do it again in Game 5.

2) I don’t know what the hell happened to Vicente Padilla, but I’m more confident in him than Hamels right now.

We keep saying it over and over; he was cast off by a Texas team starving for pitching in a pennant race, and he can’t possibly keep up what he’s doing – yet, somehow he still does. After finishing up the regular season in LA effectively, he might just be the best Dodger starter right now – his two postseason starts have combined to last 14.1 IP in which he’s allowed just 8 hits, 1 run, and a 10/2 K/BB ratio.

Can he keep it up, especially in the hostile environment of Philadelphia? Who knows – but you’d be foolish to bet against him now. At least the weather won’t be an issue, as it’s in the mid 70s right now here in the East.

3) It’s just one game.

I know this is the cliche to end all cliches, but the Dodgers can’t win all three games tonight. Once the first pitch is thrown, the only thing that’s important is scoring more runs than they allow in these nine innings – and being down 3-1 doesn’t change the fact that this game starts off 0-0. Just worry about tonight.

4) Might as well enjoy it, because this might be the last Dodger game for five dark, cold months.

If that’s not reason enough to get up, I don’t know what is. And just in case you need a little more motivation…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wRkzCW5qI]

(God bless YouTube, right? How did people live before blogs and embeddable video?)

Did Kansas City Just Help Define the Market for Chad Billingsley?

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It’s not often I get to feature Kansas City Royals news on this site, so let’s take a moment to reflect on trading Odalis Perez for Elmer Dessens, considering Esteban German, and the unfortunate acquisition of Angel Berroa as recent - though tenuous – ties between Los Angeles and Kansas City. Since I’m pretty sure that the Royals could dump their entire roster and still not be in on Manny Ramirez, what could they possibly have done now that’d affect the Dodgers? CBS Sports and their suspiciously Pete Hornberger-looking columnist Danny Knobler have the answer:

We’d known for a while that the Royals were interested in signing Zack Greinke to an extension, but today’s news of a four-year deal is still noteworthy. Finally, the Royals have shown a willingness to keep a young talent rather than trade him away.

Greinke’s deal will pay him $38 million, sources told CBSSports.com.

Somewhat lost in the Manny-mania, Furcal-kerfluffle and… uh… starting-rotation flu of this offseason is the need to start identifying which of the crop of young players is worth keeping around and getting them signed to long-term deals. Andre Ethier, Russell Martin, and Jonathan Broxton each reached arbitration this year; James Loney, Matt Kemp, and Chad Billingsley aren’t far behind. You just can’t go year-to-year in arbitration with all of those guys; not only will their prices increase every year, the complete lack of cost certainty ruins your planning. I think we’d all agree that Martin is the highest priority due to the utter lack of catching, and there are rumors that discussion towards that end have been had. Logically, wouldn’t a top young ace like Billingsley be next in the queue?

It’s not exactly a fair comparison between Greinke and Billingsley right now, because Greinke was arbitration-eligible while Billingsley still has one more year of low-priced servitude. That being said, let’s compare Greinke, Billingsley, and another young starter who recently signed a deal – Cole Hamels.

Pitcher Yrs/$ ’09 Age  Service  Yrs Bought IP ERA+ Extra Credit…
Hamels 3/$20.5m 25 2.143 3 arb-eligible 543 133 married Survivor babe
Greinke 4/$38m 25 4.057 2 arb, 2 FA 658.7 105 missed ’06 w/anxiety
Billingsley – 24 2.110 1 more until arb 437.2 132 broke leg in November

Hamels and Billingsley are actually surprisingly similar – look at those ERA+’s – though the fact that Hamels was a postseason hero and already arbitration-eligible as a “Super 2″ player skews the comparison slightly. Still, Hamels is making $6.8m/year to skip out on arbitration, while Greinke is getting $9.5m/year to bypass his first two years of free agency as well. Assuming that Billingsley has another solid year, he’ll enter 2010 with three arbitration years left, but with better stats than Greinke. I mean, there’s no longer any remaining question about whether we want him around, right? So why not buy out his three arbitration years and the first year of free agency with a 4 year, $36 million deal? It’s more per year than Hamels, because it includes a year of free agency where Hamels’ does not; it’s slightly less than Greinke because while Billingsley is the superior pitcher, it only takes away one free agent year whereas Greinke just signed away two.

I really don’t expect anything to happen with Billingsley this offseason; not with him still being a year from arbitration and coming off a broken leg. But by this time next year, other young stars like Felix Hernandez and Jon Lester will be coming up on arbitration years, and if they’ve signed even bigger contracts than Greinke and Hamels, it could pull Billingsley’s price up even further. We all know we want him – let’s get it done.