The Hall of Fame case for Cole Hamels

If you grew up watching baseball in the late 2000s and 2010s, you know the name Cole Hamels. With silky smooth mechanics, one of MLB's best changeups, and movie-star good looks, he had a brilliant pitching career.

For the first time this winter, Baseball Hall of Fame voters are being tasked with deciding whether or not Hamels is worthy of induction into Cooperstown.

Peruse the list of Hall of Fame starting pitchers and you will see a variance in the caliber of careers. For every Walter Johnson and Cy Young, you have ten CC Sabathia/Waite Hoyt/Dazzy Vance types. Inductees exist on a spectrum, and if chosen, Hamels would certainly be on the lower end of that spectrum. His candidacy ought to be mulled over carefully.

While a player's place in the history of the sport factors into their HOF candidacy, important, too, is where they rank among their contemporaries. The timing of Hamels' debut makes this particularly complicated. 

Breaking into the majors in 2006, Hamels got his feet wet in the midst of the golden years of Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz. They epitomized the last great era of starting pitcher workhorses. All four would be inducted in their first year of HOF eligibility. 

When Hamels debuted, MLB starters were averaging 5.8 innings per outing. By the time he announced his retirement in 2023, individual workloads had diminished to an average of 5.1 innings per start. The job description gradually changed in the interim.

Hamels made the necessary adjustments along the way. Since 2006, he ranks fifth in bWAR and sixth in WAA (wins above average) among pitchers to throw at least 2,000 innings. His 123 ERA+ (100 represents league average) is tied with David Price for sixth. Broaden the scope of our search by an additional half-decade and Hamels still looks elite. Since 2001, he is the seventh-best pitcher on a bWAR per inning basis (.021), ahead of HOF ballot holdovers Mark Buehrle, Andy Pettitte, and Félix Hernández.

Speaking of the latter, Hernández received an encouraging 20.6 percent of the vote in his first year of eligibility. For a player to be elected, they must receive votes on at least 75 percent of ballots cast.

What Hernández lacks in terms of longevity, he nearly makes up for it in accolades. "The King" won an AL Cy Young in 2010, hurled a perfect game, and made six All-Star appearances. However, he had no postseason pedigree to speak of, having never thrown a single playoff pitch, with Seattle sporting just five winning seasons during his fifteen seasons in the majors.

Hamels, on the other hand, meaningfully added to his résumé in October. During the 2008 postseason, Hamels went 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA over five starts in which he averaged seven innings a start, as the Phillies won their first World Series since 1980. Hamels would go on to receive NLCS and World Series MVP honors.

Some more notable Hamels fun facts:

• He's one of 57 pitchers with at least 2,500 innings pitched and an ERA+ greater than 120, of which 32 are in the Hall of Fame. Three others—Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander—are destined to be elected once eligible.
• By WAR, Hamels is the 16th-most valuable pitcher in the Cy Young Award era (1956-present) to never win the hardware himself.

To completely discount Cole Hamels' HOF candidacy is to be ignorant about how the role of the starting pitcher has evolved throughout the past two decades. It's difficult to imagine a 2026 induction for him, but over time, hopefully BBWAA voters evaluate his remarkable career with the proper context.