On Monday, it was announced that James Shields would sign with the San Diego Padres for 4 years and $75mm. With Shields now off the free agent market, teams looking for high-end pitching now have to look to the trade market. Luckily for those teams, however, Phillies left-hander Cole Hamels lies as an alternative. Hamels has been the subject of many rumors this winter, and even though the Padres, a major suitor for Hamels’ services, may be off the board now that they signed Shields, Philadelphia should have no problem finding interested teams this season, as Hamels is the best pitcher available on the trade market.
Hamels, entering his age-31 season, has been a true ace for the Phillies, despite being the third starter in their stacked rotation at the end of the last decade. He has been a workhorse, posting 5 straight 200-inning seasons. In addition to being durable, Hamels has found success in the playoffs with a career 3.21 ERA in 81 playoff innings . Hamels is primarily a fastball, changeup, and cutter pitcher, but he mixes a curve in at about 9% of the time. The following figure shows the movement of these four pitches.
The first thing we can takeaway from this graph is that Hamels has great command of his pitches, as he is able to generate relatively consistent movement of his pitches. This is shown by the tight spread of the plot points. At first glance, the seven curveball plot points in the midst of all the fastball points might seem like Hamels does not have good command of his curve; however those seven plot points can be discounted as they were mistaken by PITCHf/x. Those points were intentional balls thrown to Travis D’Arnaud and David Wright on June 1. After discounting the mistaken curveball plots, you can see a few cutter plot points among the curveball plot points toward the bottom of the graph. It seems that in this circumstance, Hamels got a little more on top of the ball when releasing it than he normally does, creating a slider-like break.
The second takeaway from this graph is that Hamels can be extremely deceptive with his pitches. He is able to make his cutter and changeup slightly break off of his fastball trajectory, causing a tough at bat. In addition, Hamels’ remarkably consistent release point, as seen in the figure below, makes him even more deceptive to batters. The only flaw in his release point is due to the fluke in the PITCHf/x data from the intentional walks to David Wright and Travis D’Arnaud. Otherwise, Hamels’ release points have been almost identical, creating deception in his delivery.
In 2014, Hamels was able to utilize his cutter as his most effective pitch. When batters were able to put Hamels’ cutter in play, they had a .261 batting average. This is most likely because batters were not able to square up the cutter due to the pitch’s slight deviation from the fastball. Despite his cutter’s effectiveness, Hamels’ most deceptive pitch was his changeup. His changeup, which came in at about 83-86 MPH, was about 7-8 MPH slower than his fastball. Usually pitchers would like to have a little more separation in the velocities between their fastball and off-speed pitch; however, the separation was just enough to avoid hard contact. Hamels’ changeup had 41% of swings miss, the highest rate of all his pitches. Even Hamels’ rarely used curve, while being his most inconsistent pitch, was deceptive, as 36% of swings against his curveball went for swinging strikes.
Because of Hamels’ consistent release points and great command, Hamels can throw four above average pitches at any time in the count. This is reflected in the great K/9 rates (shown below) he has posted in his career. While, his strikeout rates have varied over the years, Hamels’ strikeout rates are trending in the right direction, and are consistently great, averaging about 8.6 K/9 for his career.
Additionally, after taking a look at the rotation that Hamels has been able to generate on his pitches, there is no reason to believe that Hamels’ strikeout rates will regress soon. All of Hamels’ offerings have above average revolutions per minute for left-handed pitchers, and, in 2014, Hamels improved on creating more spin for all of his pitches except his cutter.
For a pitcher with such great command of his pitches, Hamels has surprisingly shown average walk rates. This is due to the fact he has fell behind in the count at about the league average rate. However, Hamels has been able to combat his average walk rates by striking a lot of hitters out and limiting home runs. Because Hamels strikes out a lot of hitters and limits home runs, there is no reason to foresee and regression in the immediate future, especially if he can keep his walk rates constant.
A trend in Hamels’ statistics that could cause Hamels to regress in the future lies in his batted ball data (shown below). While Hamels got ground balls at a slightly above average rate in 2014 by keeping the ball down in the zone, hitters were also able to square up his pitches for line drives at an above average rate, which could be explained by the fact that he kept the first pitch up in the zone above the league average at around 36%. Batters took advantage of this by hitting .352 in 0-0 counts. Additionally, the increase in line drive percentage is trending in the wrong direction for the Phillies lefty. If this trend continues into the future, he will likely give up more hits, as line drives have the highest percentage of falling for hits.
The major hurdle the Phillies face is the 4 years and $90mm left on Hamels’ contract. After you factor in a $20mm club option with a $6mm buyout, the contract could be worth either 4 years and $96mm or 5 years and $110mm. Because Hamels has trade protection in his contract (he can block up to 20 teams), he would be able to use his option as leverage against the acquiring team, most likely making his contract the 5 year $110mm to his potential new team. Additionally his 5th year club option could become a $24mm vesting option if he hits innings requirements and stays healthy . A five-year deal with an average annual value of $22mm would be a big financial commitment for a team to take on, thereby lessening the potential return for the Phillies.
In order to derive Hamels’ trade value, I looked at dollar value per WAR to find an estimate of what Hamels’ trade value. The current dollar value per WAR on the free agent market is anywhere from $5mm - $7mm per war. For my analysis, I used $6mm per WAR. Hamels has been on average about a 4 WAR pitcher over the past 3 years. Assuming that Hamels will average a 4 WAR over the life of his remaining contract, he would be worth about $24mm in average annual value on the free agent market. Currently the remaining 5 years on his deal (assuming his club option is picked up as part of the trade) come at an average annual value of $22mm. Hamels’ value on the open market exceeds his current contract by $2mm, showing that his contract is a slight bargain.
At 31 years old, Hamels is entering the final years of his peak. It is reasonable to think that Hamels could be a 4 WAR pitcher for a couple of years, but as Hamels gets older, some regression is to be expected. Additional regression could be expected if Hamels moves to the American League, as he would face tougher competition. Over the life of his current contract, Hamels’ performance could regress to the point where his contract is paying him more than the open market would based on his performance. In this scenario, the Phillies would look to absorb that money from the contract to receive a better offer for Hamels. The Phillies could opt to absorb even more money from Hamels’ contract, because the more money the Phillies absorb, the better offer they’ll receive for Hamels. For example, if a team interested in acquiring Hamels in a hypothetical scenario expects Hamels to regress to a 3 WAR pitcher, he will be worth about $18mm on the open market, which would be $4mm less than his contract his paying him. In this case, the team trying to acquire Hamels would most likely want the Phillies to at least cover the $4mm per year that they expect him to be a 3 WAR pitcher. If Hamels is expected to regress and under perform the total value of his contract after the 5 years, the Phillies will, at the minimum, have to absorb the value of which he under performs his contract by in order to maximize their return.
As shown before, Hamels’ average WAR over the past 3 years during his peak was about 4 wins. During his three-year peak with his current contract, Hamels only outperformed his contract by about $2mm annually. Over the life of Hamels’ contract, Hamels’ open market value will most likely be less than the remaining $110 million left on his, as he only over performed his contract value by $2mm annually during his peak. This means that the Phillies will have to eat some of his contract to get top prospects in return. If the Phillies are forced to absorb part of Hamels’ contract, they will look for the value they absorbed (in prospects) as a minimum return in a the trade. However, a desperate team in a playoff race could decide to take on a bigger part of the contract if they feel that acquiring Hamels will set them up for a deep playoff run.
While not a perfect method to analyzing trade value, looking at dollar per WAR values can be useful, especially for analyzing a Hamels trade, as there are not any trade comps available. Regardless of how teams value Hamels, the lefty is a prolific pitcher and would offer an upgrade to any team’s staff.
Sources:
I Fangraphs
II "Philadelphia Phillies." Cot's Baseball Contracts. Baseball Prosepectus. Web.
NOTE: All statistics accurate as of 02/11/15
By Steven Pisciotta
AriBall.com
