The Phillies have been hoping that Hamels would take a Jered Weaver-type deal. But Hamels’ agent, John Boggs, has been adamant that Weaver isn’t their idea of a comparable case. And we would conjecture that there are two reasons for that: 1) CC Sabathia, and 2) Ryan Howard.

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OK, so why Howard? Because it would be nuts to think Hamels didn’t notice that the Phillies reached out to their first baseman, two years before his free agency arrived, and paid him top-of-the-market dollars (five years, $125 million). There was no hometown discount in that package. So why would they expect Hamels to take one?

“The Phillies have proven,” Boggs told Rumblings, “that if they’ve got a player and they like the player, they’ll pay pretty close to free-agent value.”

He didn’t name any names. But you don’t need to be Ruben Amaro Jr. to connect those dots.

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