You've probably heard already, but Phillies ace Cole Hamels is a free agent after this season. While the Phillies want to re-sign him, they're in a tough situation, because he could bring back good value in a trade and could walk anyway.
So this offseason, Hamels will be popular. And when he spent the past few days rubbing elbows with his fellow All-Stars in Kansas City, he got quite a few pitches from them.
One specifically that should irk Phillies fans was from Dodgers left-hander and reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw, who admitted that he tried to sell Hamels on L.A.
"You'd look good in Dodger blue," Kershaw told Hamels, per Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times.
The two players were locker-room neighbors so it wasn't hard for Kershaw to chat him up, and Kershaw was open about wanting another stud lefty in the Los Angeles rotation.
"I would love to have him here," Kershaw said, via our NBC bros at Hardball Talk. “Our whole team would love to have a guy of his caliber. I hope we make a run at him.”
Here's the good news: Hamels says he's not listening to pitches like the one Kershaw gave him. Of course, he also said he gets lots of pitches too.
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"All I say to them is that I've been to every city, and I know what every city is like," Hamels said Tuesday, according to Danny Knobler of CBSSports.com.
In fact, Hamels expressed confidence that the Phillies weren't finished yet, particularly because Roy Halladay is getting set to make a rehab start.
"We might start a roll," Hamels said. "We might even be able to sweep a team. Have we done that this year? We have to get back to having confidence. If we do that, we can be the team that won 102 games [last year]."
Actually ... that might be kind of tough. Dan crunched the numbers earlier Wednesday, and just to hit 88 wins, the Phils need to win 65 percent of their remaining games.
But still, Hamels point makes sense: he's not going to bail out on his team. He's going to keep pitching his tail off and hope the Phillies can get hot and make a run. After all, he doesn't control his immediate future; that's on Ruben Amaro Jr.. and other teams.
Besides, worst-case scenario is if people keep bugging them he can just send Jonathan Papelbon after them.
