Rangers’ rotation has its standard bearer as Hamels piles up Ws

At various points this season Cole Hamels’ stock has been downgraded.

The Texas Rangers left-hander wasn’t particularly good in the final month of 2016 and in his lone start in the American League Division Series. Coming off of that, he hasn’t been missing enough bats, with a strikeout rate well below his career average entering the season.

He missed nearly two months because of an oblique injury. At age 32 and in his 12th season, his tires might be starting to show some wear after all those innings and strikeouts and pitches thrown.

Don’t look now, but Hamels is 9-1 this season with a 3.42 ERA. Following the trade of Yu Darvish, he was upgraded to the Rangers’ undisputed staff ace, and he has pitched like it.

In a statistical era where the win has been dismissed as faulty and misleading, the Rangers will take every win in every form they can get, and they see Hamels’ stock soaring.

They hope others in the rotation can follow his lead, especially with the bullpen missing key pieces and stocked with inexperienced arms.

“He’s been Cole Hamels,” manager Jeff Banister said. “Cole knows how to win baseball games. It’s one of those elements of pitching that when you look up and see guys like this, they know how to win baseball games.

“They know how win the 2-1 game, they know how to win the 5-0 game, and they know how to win that 10-9 game, too.”

Hamels beat the Los Angeles Angels on Monday to open a key four-game series, allowing two runs on three hits in seven innings, and Tyson Ross tried to solved his woes Tuesday in a late game at Angel Stadium.

The bar was set for Ross, not to mention Wednesday and Thursday starters Andrew Cashner and Martin Perez, a night earlier.

“Anytime the opening pitcher goes into a series and sets the tone for a series, that’s a big deal,” Cashner said. “You want to outdo the guy before you. We’re all competitive in here. We’re all friends, so it’s fun.”

Hamels didn’t buy into the notion that he set a tone for the rest to follow. He simply continued the rhythm he had in his previous three starts, beginning with a 96-pitch complete game Aug. 5 at Minnesota.

He said that he rediscovered his changeup at Target Field, and that made his fastball and cutter more effective. He has won his three starts since and has won five consecutive decisions.

Hamels also improved to 31-7 — that’s an .816 winning percentage — in his first 60 starts with the Rangers. Only one other pitcher in MLB history has a .800 winning percentage of his first 60 starts with a club, Jim McCormick of the Chicago Cubs in 1885 and 1886.

“It’s just a matter of being able to make the right pitches in the right situations,” Hamels said. “We have to beat every team if we want to stay in this wild-card race. We have to stay on the rhythm that we’ve been able to carry over from last week. It’s a matter of going out there and plugging away and doing the job the way we know how.”

Hamels was at only 92 pitches when he was lifted before the eighth inning. He said he felt as if he could have continued, but Banister said that he didn’t like the idea of a tiring Hamels facing the Angels’ best hitters for a fourth time.

The final two innings were a struggle, as Jose Leclerc couldn’t finish the eighth and as Alex Claudio had to face Mike Trout and Albert Pujols with the game on the line in the ninth.

Claudio actually rates as one of the more experienced Rangers relievers, at age 25 and with  146 2/3 career innings. Jason Grilli is easily the most experienced, and Tony Barnette pitched six seasons in Japan before debuting in the majors last year.

Jhan Marinez has been around the block a few times, but still has only 122 1/3 career innings.

But that inexperience doesn’t necessarily mean that more will be asked of the starters even though Hamels and Cashner are confident they can get outs with their pitch counts north of 100.

“I don’t believe in pitch counts,” Cashner said. “I believe in stressful innings and non-stressful innings.”

Banister takes all sorts of factors into account when deciding if a starter has had enough.

“We’ve pushed some,” he said. “We send those guys out there with the thought that they’re going to give us every bit of what they can give us, and when we feel like we need to make a move, we make a move.”

The key is that starters give the Rangers a chance to win. Hamels has been doing that of late, as he usually has, no matter how much his stock has been downgraded.

This story was originally published August 22, 2017 at 10:15 PM with the headline "Rangers’ rotation has its standard bearer as Hamels piles up Ws."