Cole Hamels Talks About Getting Paid and His Stupid Annoying Ankle Injury That Keeps Him on My Fantasy Bench

Cole Hamels Talks About Getting Paid and His Stupid Annoying Ankle Injury That Keeps Him on My Fantasy Bench

Cole Hamels continues to torment my life. He’s my late-round, long-term keeper in my big fantasy league and yet, he can’t stay healthy. It’s really a tough life. And you can tell that Hamels feels the same way.  How do I know? Because his answers to WIP’s questions about his injury are very short and to the point. Unlike, say, his description of how it feels to have financial security on the mound — as opposed to last season — which ended up being rather long and awkward. But mostly awkward. I mean, I get that people are supposed to “relax” once they’re millionaires, but I don’t want to hear it out loud. But he says it anyway.

How are you physically:

“I’m good.”

On his ankle:

“I’m able to walk and run so I guess that’s good enough to get out on the field.”

On now having financial security:

“You know, I think it’s great. Just the opportunity of knowing you can go out on the field and you can relax to a point and you’re not going to stress out about certain big games. You don’t really need to, uh, hype up everything else. You know you can go out and play and get the job done and everything else is getting taken care of. More so than every pitch might mean this or every game that you do well will just be an extra perk towards a contract or someone thinking along those lines. And when you don’t have that, you just take a deep breath and go out and be yourself and just play without the added stress.”

On thinking his arm is back to where he wants it:

“Yeah, I definitely do. I’m comfortable enough, my body’s strong and I believe I have that awareness of where to throw pitches. And so I’m kind of getting into that muscle memory of where to throw things and the speed of the game.”

On adjusting pitching to an umpire:

“Um, you know, I think a lot of umpires have different strike zones in terms of being an up-down strike zone versus a side-to-side strike zone. I’ve had problems where you’re able to hit the outside corner or stretch it an inch or two off the plate, but it’s hard enough; why would you want to throw the ball down the pipe when you play in a park that’s not really meant for the pitchers to do that. It’s one of those things – it’s truly hard to move your game to an umpire’s game. You’re just hoping eventually if you hit a spot enough times an umpire’s gonna call it for you.”

On showing emotion while on the field and actually getting angry:

“Of course. It’s something where you’re human, and I know you can’t show the emotion because you don’t want to show up the other team or the umpire. But I think there are always going to be sometimes where you let your emotions slip because it will hurt you in the long run with your teammates, other teams and umpires.”