Since Cole Hamels' 2009 season has been covered in some depth on TGP, I thought people might find this Andy Martino blog post to be of interest.

A few thoughts:

First, Martino's criticism of Neyer is entirely fair here. I'm a longtime fan of Neyer's work and I actually agree with his ultimate conclusion about Hamels, but it can't be denied that he always has been and continues to be one of the most egregious straw-manners in the business, and that's exactly what he does to Salisbury in the linked post. Neyer could have just made his point instead of feeling like he needed to first find some sportswriter to cast as his foil. This is a piss-fight that could have been avoided.

Second, I wonder if Martino's belief that certain things have gone "wrong" with Hamels' season is necessarily at odds with the view that most of us share here - that Hamels' peripherals in 2009 are similar to his peripherals in 2008. Maybe there's a way to synthesize both viewpoints. For example, I wonder if Hamels' peripherals have changed at all as the season has gone along. If they have, that could support the "Verducci" hypothesis - that he's been wearing out as his innings have accumulated. Just from eyeballing the game log, his home run rate sure seems to have skyrocketed in the postseason, at least. His pitch counts have also definitely increased lately - are pitch counts necessarily a function of luck?

Third, on more of a big-picture note: while I understand that throughout the history of baseball, pitchers have never shown an ability to sustain high BABIPs and low BABIPs for very long periods of time, it begs the question: is that necessarily because outlying BABIPs are purely a matter of random chance, or could it be because outlying BABIPs are affectable by player adjustments? I don't know if there's any way to conclusively answer this question, but my initial reaction is that both possibilities are equally plausible.