What To Do About Hamels' Contract

Dashing

 The Philadelphia Phillies' number one handsy boy Cole Hamels is set to face free agency, and it brings up a serious set of issues for the Phillies front office to deal with. As far as payroll is concerned, it seems the sky's the limit, but with how long ownership will want to pony up enormous contracts for a surefire championship teams that aren't winning championships is hard to say. Don't get me wrong, I think the window for the Phillies to win is still wide open, but it's closing fast, and we're talking about a player with one year left before he reaches a very lucrative free agency.

Adorable

The starting three in the Phillies rotation kicks ass right now. Halladay, Lee and Hamels were a very integral part in making Philadelphia the best team by record in baseball last year. Veteran goatee king Joe Blanton and promising young right hander Vance Worley round out as solid of a four and five as any rotation could have.  Hunter Pence is an amazing trade acquisition from last year to help cover the loss of Raul Ibanez who aged himself out of the roster. The offense is still good, but the core of it is aging. So what does this have to do with Hamels?

Priceless

 

Well, assuming the front office learned anything from Ryan Howard, it means that salary and years are going to have to be a rational factor in how Hamel is approached. Not just from the standpoint of Hamels, but how the team is going to be restructured once the already pretty old players get older. Hamels isn't going to settle for a three year deal when pitchers like CJ Wilson are getting paid up the ass by the Angels, but the Phillies aren't going to want to throw an amount of money at him that could anchor them down to irrelevance. If I were Cole I'd tell Heidi (the beautiful minx in the past two pictures) to start looking at real estate in New York or Los Angeles and get ready to pitch my ass off for the next six months.


I know that none of the media I've posted on here is baseball relevant, so here's a video game home run Cole Hamels crushes off of R.A. Dickey in MLB The Show. MRsuh1312 deems it "rettarted"

Rettarted indeed!