Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
May 08, 2006
Great Headline
Cole fails to fail, slows timetable

The title refers to what the general manager wants to see from Cole Hamels:

Phillies general manager Pat Gillick, who said last week that he can really tell about a young pitcher after watching him come back from getting roughed up, will have to wait a little while longer.

You see, Hamels keeps getting batters out. And it's not even close:

In those three starts, the 6-3 lefthander has pitched 23 innings, walked one, struck out 36, and has a 0.39 ERA. Nearly as impressive, if you are on the front-office side of the business, is that Hamels drew a season-high crowd of 8,776 to Lackawanna County Stadium, including a walkup of more than 4,100.

He sure looks like an ace. His effectiveness comes from the huge difference between his fastball and changeup:

The next thing you notice is not so much the number of strikeouts - 10 yesterday, 36 in three Triple A starts - but the way Hamels goes about getting them.

His fastball topped out in the seventh inning yesterday at 92 mph on the stadium radar gun; fast gun, slow gun, dunno. All but one of his first eight strikeouts against Syracuse came on an offspeed pitch, usually a changeup that arrived at 80 mph.

I'm not sure how many starts Hamels needs before it's clear AAA batters are overmatched against him. The Phillies may need to promote him just because he needs the challenge.


Posted by David Pinto at 10:30 AM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Gillick's being a bit of an idiot. I mean, what if Cole Hamels is too good to get beaten up by a bunch of AAA players? He'll be stuck waiting for a bad start for a very long time while the big league club could use a really good front-line starter.

Posted by: Benjamin Kabak at May 8, 2006 10:53 AM

well if the phillies don't WANT a good young starter on their staff, the other NL teams ain't gonna complain...

Posted by: lisa gray at May 8, 2006 12:02 PM

Wow, Cole Hamels is still in the minors and David Bell is the starting third baseman for a major league team. THere's gotta be something inherently wrong with that.

Posted by: david at May 8, 2006 01:01 PM

Don't tell Gillick that. He might try to put Cole Hamels in as the new third baseman.

Posted by: Benjamin Kabak at May 8, 2006 01:28 PM

there is no reason to throw a guy with less than 200 career minor league innings into a team in the middle of a win streak. there will be plenty of time for hamels to have an impact on this team - this year. he has only pitched at aaa for three starts and completely skipped aa reading.

last i checked pat gillick does have a clue, so i'll defer to him on this.

Posted by: Tim at May 8, 2006 02:29 PM

I think the "wait to see how he gets roughed up" quote is a bit overblown. Like Tim, I defer to Gillick on this, I have faith in him. But hey, I wouldn't be surprised if Hamels can play third...he can do everything else:
http://colehamelsfacts.com

Posted by: Tom G at May 8, 2006 02:34 PM

Just for fun I checked the qualifiers at third and found five (honest!) with an OPS worse than Bell. The absolute rock-bottom was Adrian Beltre at .575. That ridiculous contract is starting to look like the worst waste of money since...my paycheck?

Posted by: Casey Abell at May 8, 2006 03:08 PM

While I was sorting the ESPN stats, I looked at all qualifiers regardless of position. Pujols and Giambi are duking it out at the top, with Thome not far behind. These are the only guys over the 1.200 OPS level.

The absolute worst so far this year? Rondell White at .157/.170/.176. Boy, does that look ugly.

Posted by: Casey Abell at May 8, 2006 03:48 PM

I think the point I was trying to make was that Hamels is almost certainly going to have a short career - his injury history pretty much assures that. Why not bring him up now and maximize the starts he's going to make as a major-leaguer? He is absolutely dominating AAA hitting (that's the reason he skipped AA) and has nothing to prove. Why not get 20 starts out of him in Philly before he gets hurt again?

Posted by: david at May 8, 2006 09:04 PM
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