Jason Hammel, A Forgotten Role-Player In The Cubs 2016 Championship Team

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As I flipped my Chicago Cubs calendar to a new day earlier this week, I was greeted with a trivia question. What four starting pitchers each started at least 30 games for the Cubs in both 2015 and 2016?

Image courtesy of © Dennis Wierzbicki-Imagn Images

Of course, most will probably get Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, and Kyle Hendricks right off the bat. While I did manage to get the fourth pitcher, it took me a beat or two longer than the other three. Jason Hammel started 31 games for the Cubs in 2015 and followed that up by starting 30 games in 2016. 

That trivia question spurred a few thoughts. First, those mid-2010s Cubs teams were incredibly fortunate to have as few injuries as they did, particularly on the pitching side. While we are in a slightly different era of pitching usage, Justin Steele is the only Cub to start 30 games for the team in any of the past three seasons, and that was in 2023 when he started exactly 30 games. 

The second thought is that Jason Hammel quickly became a forgettable member of the 2016 Cubs. This is likely because he did not appear in a single game during the team's 2016 World Series run. Despite that, I thought it was a good opportunity to pay respect to what he brought to the Cubs during his time with the club. 

Before signing with the Cubs before the 2014 season, Hammel had a 4.80 ERA from his debut season in 2006 until his 2013 season with the Orioles, with a stop in Colorado between. He was brought in on a one-year, $6 million contract to eat innings on a team desperately in need of a reliable veteran. 

Hammel was more than reliable for the Cubs in 2014. After pitching to the tune of a 2.98 ERA and 3.19 FIP in 108 ⅔ innings, he was traded to the Oakland Athletics, along with Jeff Samardzija, on July 5 of that season. In return, the Cubs netted Billy McKinney, Dan Straily, and Addison Russell. 

Both the Cubs and Hammel enjoyed their time together so much that they decided to run it back. The two sides agreed to a two-year, $20 million contract before the 2015 season. The right-hander continued to provide stability behind the incredibly solid front three of Arrieta, Lester, and Hendricks. In the 2015 season, he posted a 3.74 ERA, 3.68 FIP, and 2.3 FanGraphs WAR. 

For his career, Hammel was not a strikeout artist, but for this one season, he was. He posted a career-high 172 strikeouts in 2015, and his strikeout rate of 24.2 percent was 17 percent higher than the league average, according to FanGraphs, and far higher than his career rate of 18.2 percent. He did pitch two games for the Cubs that postseason, though one was much more memorable than the other. In game four of the 2015 NLDS, he allowed two earned runs across three innings of work, though it was his plate appearance in the bottom of the second that I will always remember:

 

Not only was it incredibly satisfying to make John Lackey lose his mind like that (although that was not hard to do), but many will probably also recall the plate appearance that Hammel’s single led to:

 

Of course, the Cubs would go on to win that game, clinching a spot in the NLCS. Good times. If you watched that clip above and recall Hammel being surprisingly competent at the plate, that’s because he was. Relative to other pitchers, at least. From 2015 to 2016, his 19 wRC+ was 23rd among 111 pitchers that took at least 30 plate appearances. Let this be a reminder that while it was fun and memorable when a pitcher notched a big hit like the one above, they were also really bad at hitting. The designated hitter being added to the National League is absolutely a plus for the sport as a whole. 

I digress. After the 2015 season, the Cubs signed John Lackey, which effectively bumped Hammel to the fifth spot in the pitching rotation for the 2016 season. Despite putting up an almost identical 3.83 ERA that season, his 4.48 FIP was much higher, and the strikeout rate dropped back down closer to his career average. Because of this, and as previously mentioned, he did not make an appearance in the 2016 playoffs en route to the Cubs’ first World Series win in 108 years. 

After the Cubs declined Hammel’s team option for the 2017 season, he signed a two-year, $16 million contract with the Kansas City Royals, where he pitched two, mostly ineffective seasons before retiring just before the start of the 2019 season. 

It’s been almost 10 years since that magical 2016 season for the Cubs, and while Jason Hammel didn’t play a huge role in the playoffs that year, he was still an integral part of the 2015 and 2016 regular seasons, where the Cubs won 200 games combined. He helped form an incredibly reliable pitching rotation in 2016, combining with Lester, Arrieta, Hendricks, and Lackey to make 152 starts. In the modern game, this is absolutely unheard of.

So today, let’s remember Jason Hammel. Reliable, durable, and unsung. Yet still an important member of what is still, and probably forever will be, the most memorable sports season of my lifetime. 

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