Is Cole Hamels a Hall of Famer?
He's #69 all-time in bWAR. #37 all-time in Ks.
In bWAR, he's already ahead of Three-Finger Brown, Red Ruffing, Whitey Ford and Early Wynn, among other Hall of Famers. If he were to play three more seasons beyond this year to age 38 and earn 10 more bWAR in those 3 and a half season, he'd move into the top 30 in bWAR, passing such players as Hal Newhauser, Jim Bunning, Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal, Dazzy Vance, Bob Feller, Roy Halladay, John Smoltz, Jim Palmer and Don Sutton. More importantly, every single player ahead of him in bWAR would be in the Hall except for Roger Clemons (steroid-using jerk), Curt Schilling (sketchy jerk), and Jim McCormick (dead ball era player nobody remembers).
If he were able to pitch relatively effectively through 2022, he'd also be right at or very near 3k strike outs, probably in the top 20-25 all-time. Add to that, that he's a NLCS and WS MVP with a 3.41 ERA in over 100 post-season innings and has generally been considered a "good guy" with absolutely no off-field funny business and that's a pretty compelling HoF candidacy.
On the negatives, the voters had been extremely hard on starting pitchers recently, not letting guys with similar resumes in. Maybe with the recent selections of Mussina and Halladay, we've turned the corner on that, Schilling and Kevin Brown not making it in due to off-field stuff more than on-field stuff. Still, Hamels will likely be on the ballot with a bunch of guys with similar or even better resumes when he starts to be considered, namely Verlander, Sabathia, Greinke, Scherzer, Felix Hernandez, maybe Jon Lester and a few years later Kershaw, Sale and Bumgarner. Starting about 2029-30, those are going to be some ballots loaded with starting pitchers. And Hamels is distinctly lacking in superlatives outside of his 2008 playoff performance - only 4 all-stars (but probably a 5th on the way this year), never better than 5th in the Cy Young voting. He's also going to struggle to get to 200 wins for those voters who still look at that.
I don't know what it was about those Philly teams Hamels was on, but he has some amazing years where they didn't get him many Ws... '08 - 3.09 ERA in 227 IP, only 14 wins; '10 - 3.06 ERA in 208 IP, only 12 wins; '11 - 2.79 ERA over 216 IP, only 14 wins; '13 - 3.60 ERA over 220 IP, only 8 (!?!?) wins; '14 - 2.46 ERA over 204 IP - only 9 (!?!?) wins. Heck, last year between Texas and the Cubs, he had a 3.78 ERA over 190 innings pitched and only got 9 wins. That's just bizarre. He could have had 16-18 wins in any single one of those seasons and could very easily be sitting at 200 career wins right now.
Although Hamels wasn't the only Phillies pitcher from that era that got seemingly cheated out of wins... Cliff Lee had a 3.11 ERA over 211 innings pitched in 2012 and somehow only got 6 wins.