How has Cole Hamels fared in the American League thus far?
Cole Hamels has been talked about a lot this offseason due to the fact he’s on the trading block. Because of that, pundits have spent considerable time over the duration of the winter questioning if Hamels can pitch for an American League club as a consequence of playing mostly inferior competition in the National League.
Well, the previous sentence is not necessarily a pinpoint accurate assessment of their concern. They are, however, stuck in the unfounded stereotype that career NL pitchers can’t handle the tougher competition the AL has to offer.
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It is true that the offenses in the AL are on average more difficult to pitch against than NL. This is backed up by way of hitters in the AL posting a 99 wRC+ in 2014 compared to the 93 wRC+ over the same time period. In large part, this can be credited to the designated hitter that is present in the AL in place of the pitcher batting in the NL.
So, yes, it is reasonable to assume that subjecting any pitcher to the competition of the AL opposed to the NL will cause them to put up worse numbers. Their skills won’t change, though. In the aggregate, they are the same pitcher; the competition just gets slightly more difficult.
While watching a Spring Training preview of the Boston Red Sox, I kid you not, the analysts said Boston shouldn’t trade for Hamels multiple times because they believed he would not be able to make the transition to the AL. The analysts failed to back their opinion up with much hard evidence.
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They failed to mention that over the past five seasons from 2010-2014 Hamels posted the tenth-best fWAR among starting pitchers. Not that I would expect them, or any baseball show for that matter, to use fWAR to judge performance, but at least try to contextualize how good the southpaw has been.
For the record, Cole Hamels is a fantastic pitcher and should be one for years to come. At this juncture it looks like he will probably start the year in the NL with the Phillies, but if he were to pitch for an AL club in the near future I’d expect him to be the same guy, save any age or health related issues.
Hamels is 31 and he’s been pitching since 2006. There’s some clear mileage here with him. If he were to suddenly go to the AL and pitch horrendously I’d surmise his age would be the cause, not the transition.
Now, what I have below are Hamels’ career statistics against AL teams on the road. I only decided to take road games into consideration because this means the DH was present. To my surprise, he has only pitched against AL teams in their ballparks only 10 times since becoming a big leaguer.
I’ve also made the executive decision to include three time intervals:
1) Hamels against AL teams on the road from 2006-2009:
- @ BAL (6/28/2006): 5 IP, 7 ER, 1.33 K:BB, 2 HRs
- @ CLE (6/18/2007): 5 IP, 6 ER, 4.0 K:BB, 1 HR
- @ TEX (6/28/2008): 7 IP, 4 ER, 4.0 K/BB, 1 HR
- @ NYY (5/24/2009): 6 IP, 2 ER, 5.0 K:BB, 1 HR
- @ TOR (6/26/2009): 4.2 IP, 4 ER, 2.0 K:BB, 0 HR
- Accumulative: 27.2 IP, 7.48 ERA, 4.2 K:BB, 5 HRs
2) Hamels against AL teams on the road from 2010-2014:
- @ BOS (6/13/2010): 7 IP, 1 ER, 4.0 K:BB, 1 HR
- @ SEA (6/19/2011): 6.1 IP, 2 ER, 6.0 K:BB, 0 HR
- @ MIN (6/13/2012): 6 IP, 6 ER, 3.0 K:BB, 2 HRs
- @ MIN (6/11/2013): 6 IP, 2 ER, 5.0 K:BB, 0 HR
- @ DET (7/26/2013): 7 IP, 2 ER, 2.0 K:BB, 0 HR
- Accumulative: 32.1 IP, 3.62 ERA, 4.43 K:BB, 3 HRs
3) And Hamels against AL teams on the road in his entire career:
- Total career from 2006-14: 10 GS, 60 IP, 5.40 ERA, 4.31 K:BB, 8 HRs
Keep in mind the above is an small sample size and should not be looked at with a whole lot of substance. The reader should be able to see that Hamels has pitched much better against AL teams recently on their home turf than he did early on in his career. What does that tell us? Probably nothing. Hamels has been a consistently good pitcher since his rookie season. I think the large discrepancy in ERA from the two time intervals is the byproduct of random variation and nothing more.
If Hamels is ever to don the uniform of an AL club, don’t let that 5.40 ERA in games when a DH was present fool you. Cole Hamels will be the same pitcher pending his age and health situation.