In an oh so Darren Rovell style post, let’s breakdown Cole Hamels’ six-year, $144 million contract into, say, smaller units:

Hamels will earn an average of $24 million per season.

Assuming Hamels averages 32 starts, 200 innings pitched, 15 wins, and 190 strikeouts per season, he will earn: $750,000 per start, $120,000 per inning, $1.6 million per win, and $126,000 per strikeout.

If he throws an average of 100 pitches per game, and pitches for an average of 120 minutes per start, he will earn $7,500 per pitch, $375,000 per hour, and $104 per second during games he starts.

You, plus sign, me, equal sign, us.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I were earning $104 per second while on the mound, I’d be incapable of pitching. I’d just stand there, completely oblivious to the world around me,  yanking on an imaginary cash register and screaming ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching like a mad man.

And, even if we were to calculate Hamels' hourly rate over the entire six years of the contract, not just during his starts, he would make $.76 per second, or, $2,736 an hour for six straight years– and that factors in a leap year!

So yeah, Hamels will make about three times the average American household income every time he walks to the mound to start an inning. The Cole Hamels Millions Meter is alive and well.