Pitcher Cole Hamels has retired from baseball after 15 seasons, the San Diego Padres announced Friday. Here’s what you need to know:

  • Hamels, 39, played his first 10 seasons for the Philadelphia Phillies before heading to the Texas Rangers, Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves. He signed a minor-league deal with the Padres this offseason but never reached the majors.
  • Instrumental in the Phillies’ 2008 title run, Hamels was named World Series MVP after going 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA through five postseason starts.
  • The 2002 first-round pick was 163-122 in his career with a 3.43 ERA and 2,560 strikeouts. He was a finalist for the Cy Young Award four times (2007, 2011, 2012 and 2014).
  • Pitcher Craig Stammen also retired, San Diego said.

LHP Cole Hamels and RHP Craig Stammen have been placed on the voluntarily retired list.

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) August 4, 2023

The Athletic’s instant analysis:

What’s Hamels’ legacy?

Hamels was the Phillies’ best homegrown pitcher in decades — a gifted lefty who broke his arm as a high school sophomore, still became a first-round pick and led Philadelphia to its second World Series title. He also earned a reputation as one of the sport’s harder-working athletes.

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Hamels, who underwent surgery to reattach his rotator cuff after the 2021 season, sought to make one final comeback when he signed a minor-league deal with his hometown Padres in February. His agent, John Boggs, said Friday that Hamels was having trouble recovering and throwing without pain. The pitcher elected to call it a career after being examined over the weekend in San Diego by doctors, who informed Hamels his shoulder was inflamed. — Lin

Stammen’s run in San Diego

Stammen will go down as one of the Padres’ most durable, and more underappreciated pitchers in recent history. The former National underwent flexor-tendon surgery in 2015 and originally joined San Diego on a minor-league deal. He broke camp with the Padres in 2017 and, over the next six seasons, led all major-league relievers in innings pitched. His most memorable performance came in Game 3 of the 2020 National League wild-card series: Stammen was the first of nine pitchers used in a win over the Cardinals that gave the Padres their first postseason series victory since 1998.

As with Hamels, shoulder trouble ended Stammen’s career. Stammen pitched with a torn rotator cuff for part of the 2022 season. While pitching in a spring training game in March, he tore a capsule in the same shoulder. Stammen all but announced his retirement shortly after that injury. — Lin

What they’re saying

“He doesn’t have any regrets, I would think, other than the fact he couldn’t just miraculously come back from the injury he sustained and the operation he sustained,” Boggs said. “But if anybody gave it 110 percent, he did.”

“He is a grinder in the truest sense,” added Boggs, who also represented San Diego’s best-known baseball player. “He had the qualities that Tony Gwynn had as far as work ethic and grinding at things.” — Lin

Required reading

(Photo: Hunter Martin / Getty Images)

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