Phillies trade Hamels to Rangers

“You think these guys are stone-cold robots”. With Yu Darvish coming off Tommy John surgery next season and the emergence of Chi-Chi Gonzalez, the Rangers have a unsafe trio of pitchers in their rotation.

As of late Wednesday night, IronPigs manager Dave Brundage was non-committal about who would start Thursday’s game given all the moves going on. Such is the nature of a team in transition, one that Nola soon could lead. Two people familiar with the deal say the Phillies have agreed to trade Hamels to the Texas Rangers for a package of prospects. If they can get what the Phillies just got for moving Hamels, in Matt Harrison and multiple top 100 prospects like P Jake Thompson, OF Nick Williams, and C Jorge Alfaro, then Tigers fans should be happy with the decision not to chase a final wildcard spot along with everyone else in the American League. “So as a coach, I could always point to him as a role model as to how to play the game”.

The addition of this trio gives the Phils six players on that list – if you count Aaron Nola, who’s now with the big club.

Nola was the Phillies’ No. 1 draft choice in 2014, the seventh player selected overall.

Hamels, who fired a no-hitter against the Chicago Cubs in his last start in Philadelphia, flirts with. First of all, his ERA at Citizens Bank Park was 3.00.

And trading Hamels isn’t a case of getting rid of a malcontent like it was when the Phillies traded Jonathan Papelbon to Washington on Tuesday, or Scott Rolen at the deadline in 2002 or Curt Schilling in 2000. So those things are always out there.

The deal is expected to be finalized Thursday after medical reviews. These prospects, along with current Phillies Aaron Nola, Maikel Franco and top prospect J.P Crawford will be the core of the next generation of Phillies. Both teams exhausted many financial resources in scouting one another for months and nothing came of it.

Diekman was at the game. Apparently, he left there early in anticipation of the delayed announcement of the trade. He’s got a long track record of great success. “We’ve spent a lot of time together, so it’s going to be tough”. But who knows, maybe being in a different stadium might do him some good.

It’s true that the result of the Hamels trade will take a few years to determine. We’ve been on the DL at the same time. This season he has been limited to just 49 games because of various injuries.

Next up is a promising outfielder Nick Williams, who is a 21-year old powerful left-handed hitting outfielder and regarded as the fifth best-prospect in the Rangers farm system. Whatever they’re doing, I haven’t heard anything, and I’m sure if they did tell me, they wouldn’t me to blurt it out.