James Shields Signing Shouldn’t Hurt Market for Cole Hamels

Early Monday morning, the San Diego Padres and free-agent pitcher James Shields agreed to terms on a four year, $75 million contract (per Jon Heyman of CBS Sports).The contract includes fifth year club option at $16 million, which would bring the contract to $91 million over five years. Shields is the last of the big three pitching free agents (Jon Lester and Max Scherzer were the others) to sign. If a team is looking for a front of the rotation starter, they will need to acquire one via trade. That turns the market toward Philadelphia, which leads us to ask the question of whether or not James Shields has changed the market for Cole Hamels.

It is no secret that Philadelphia has been shopping Cole Hamels for some time now, seeking a return larger than other clubs see fit. Now that James Shields has signed, the market for a front of the rotation pitcher shifts toward Philadelphia. Teams had previously believed that Washington would shop one of their arms, but since then, the club has denied those reports stating they are ready to go into the season with their rotation as is. If this is the case and the lone available front-line starter is in Philadelphia, what will happen to his market?

As we have seen thus far, it is all supply and demand for Ruben Amaro Jr. this off season. Amaro knows that he has one of the top-15 pitchers in baseball and is demanding a high price for Hamels’ services. Both the market and Amaro will have to settle toward a common ground and James Shields signing should help that. It makes plenty of sense that Hamels is in Philadelphia right now and not elsewhere at this point. There were still available free agents and teams could negotiate their own terms rather than acquiring an existing contract while also trading numerous top prospects. That makes perfect sense from a front office perspective, right?

There are some common trends for the two pitchers. Both Hamels and Shields can be classified as ground ball pitchers since they cause ground balls in over 45% of balls in play. While they both cause grounders, Hamels and Shields both have a strikeout-to-walk rate of 3.35:1 or higher. The final common trend is both pitchers are over thirty years of age, but experiencing an uptick in velocity in back-to-back seasons. All three of these common trends are valuable going forward as it shows they are keeping the ball down and despite the miles on their arms, their velocity is getting better.

In the last two years, Shields and Hamels have other comparable numbers with value. In terms of Earned Run Average, Hamels and Shields are within 0.13 of one another. To be specific, in that time span Hamels had a 3.05 ERA while Shields followed closely with 3.18 ERA. While Hamels takes the win in ERA, Shields ERA+, which is adjusted to ballpark, is better. Shields’ two year 128 ERA+ slightly edges out Hamels’ 122 ERA+ (higher the number the better performance).

The rest of the way, Hamels creates separation from Shields. According to Baseball-Reference, Cole Hamels has been worth 11.2 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) over the past two seasons while James Shields has been a respectable 7.4-WAR. Wins Above Replacement is not perfect, but it does provide us insight to player value relative to others at their position. If we use the past two years WAR and break it out evenly, Hamels was been 5.2-WAR while Shields was 3.7-WAR for the Kansas City Royals. Using those figures, we can figure out what each team pays the respective pitcher per additional Win Above Replacement.

As the chart above shows, over the past two seasons Hamels has been more valuable than Shields. The real concern is the money distributed per win added. In that category, the Phillies are currently paying less per additional win than the Padres. Not only is Hamels cheaper per additional win, but he is younger than Shields by two years. Along with actual age is arm age. In Shields career, he has thrown 1,910.1 innings in his career–throwing a total of 29,464 pitches. Both of those come in higher than Hamels 1,801.1 innings, throwing 27,887 pitches. So far, we can see that Hamels is younger, his arm has fewer miles and his value per WAR comes in better than Shields over past two years.

If we move on from WAR to Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), Hamels leads Shields, but there is a good reason for the Padres to believe Shields FIP will drop. In the past two seasons, Cole Hamels has posted a 3.17 FIP to Shields 3.53 FIP. For me, this holds a ton of value because it rates a pitcher in terms of what they can control. Moving to San Diego, which is a pitchers park, should help Shields cut down his home runs surrendered, which inflates his FIP. As much as I do believe Petco Park will help Shields, he has historically had an issue with surrendering home runs, so only time will tell.

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With all of this said, how does Shields signing change Hamels market? Honestly, I do not think it does. If anything, it shows that Hamels’ contract has value. In the chart above, I displayed their dollars per win above replacement over the past two seasons. While Shields has been good over the past two seasons, Hamels has been better. Not only is Hamels better than Shields at this time, but he is younger and has thrown fewer innings and pitches in his career.

Earlier this off season, I stated that I would take Cole Hamels over Jon Lester, and I would say the same in this case with Shields. I believe that Hamels would have been the second best pitcher on this years open market and may have received a higher average annual value than in his current contract. If you ask me, four years, $96 million dollars is a fair price for Hamels and the Phillies should not take on any money if they deal Hamels.

Now that the free-agent market has settled, Hamels is the lone available ace. I doubt Ruben Amaro Jr. will back down from his original asking price, which is two or three top prospects. The market has swayed toward Philadelphia and he knows that. Amaro knows that he cannot miss on a deal involving Hamels, which adds pressure, but he needs to know that there is a risk to holding on to Hamels too long.

While there are no signs of Hamels regressing, the risk is still there. Cole Hamels trade value may never be higher than it is right now and Philadelphia needs to know that. With or without Cole Hamels, this team is going to be one of the worst in baseball. That is no reason to kick him out the door, but there isn’t much value in him being here. I believe Amaro needs to do a better job negotiating a deal for Hamels. It is hard to tell any team that they need to give up their top prospect plus some. Amaro may want to test the market with each club and evaluate the packages. The Phillies farm system lacks depth and it must be addressed.

Is it better to go all-in for a guy like Red Sox prospect Blake Swihart, or maybe split their interest toward two of the Sox top-10 prospects not including Swihart? I am not really sure, but I do like Swihart quite a bit.

In the end, I think Boston, Texas, San Francisco are the most likely landing points for Cole Hamels. The Padres continue to add pieces and the Dodgers have an elite rotation featuring the best pitcher in baseball. That alone may force interest from the Giants, who would have two of the top lefties in baseball if they added Hamels.

The Red Sox do no have a front of the rotation starter, but a group of number three-to-five starters. Earlier this off season, Boston went all-in to sign Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval. I cannot see Boston going into their 2015 campaign without a true number one, which leaves them open as a trade partner.

The Giants have won three World titles in the past five seasons, so it’s unclear exactly how serious they would be about risking the limited prospects that they have for someone like Hamels. That said, it’s fair to wonder if Madison Bumgarner throwing well over 250 innings last year and no other sure-fire top of the rotation starters, if the Giants wouldn’t have interest in Hamels.

Finally, the wild card is Texas. The Rangers were hit by the injury bug in 2015 and should be better than what their 2014 season displayed. The losses of Prince Fielder, Shin-Soo Choo, Jurickson Profar and Yu Darvish before and during the season did not help the Rangers cause. A rotation featuring Darvish and Hamels would strike fear in any team. Add a healthy Derek Holland into the rotation and they would have something going for them rotationally. The depth of the Rangers system makes them an interesting trade partner.

Overall, I do not think James Shields signing has changed the market for Cole Hamels. Teams will always be hesitant to trade their top prospects while acquiring a player over thirty with a lucrative contract. Nonetheless, I believe Hamels is one of the best pitchers in baseball with favorable contract relative to his performance. At 31-years of age, Hamels still has a ton of value and shouldn’t be sold for next to nothing, but Ruben Amaro Jr. should know the risk of holding onto a player for too long at this point.