PHILADELPHIA — The Phillies are back in the World Series, but that’s about the only similarity between last year and this year for Cole Hamels.
This time a year ago, the left-hander was the toast of Philadelphia and baseball after complementing the Phillies’ title with a no-brainer selection as World Series MVP.
A year later, Hamels’ dizzying plunge to the third spot in manager Charlie Manuel’s World Series rotation has everyone wondering where the 25-year-old went wrong.
“In baseball, you always strive to be perfect,” Hamels said yesterday as he prepared to start Game 3 of a Fall Classic knotted 1-1 tonight against the Yankees. “It’s an unrealistic expectation.”
Hamels has learned that the hard way this season, slumping to 10-11 with a 4.32 ERA in the regular season and pitching even worse in the playoffs.
Hamels is 1-1 in the postseason, but his ERA has ballooned to 6.75 in three starts, and he has allowed a staggering six home runs — five of them to the Dodgers in the NLCS alone — in just 14 2/3 innings.
Hamels’ changeup, a devastating out pitch last year, isn’t fooling many hitters and too many of his curveballs have ended up serving as batting practice.
Luckily for Hamels, he has the luxury of being on a staff with a future Hall of Famer in Pedro Martinez and one of the savviest lefties of all-time in 46-year-old Jamie Moyer.
Both pitchers have taken an intense interest in getting Hamels back on track, mainly by encouraging him not to over-think the game so much and obsess about every detail.
“I keep telling him that you’re only one pitch away and not to think so much about two or three pitches down the line or who’s in the on-deck circle,” Moyer said. “It’s an issue for him.”
It hasn’t helped that the scouting report is out on Hamels, resulting in opposing hitters toying with his psyche by staying patient and fouling off a lot of pitches.
That has led to a season-long problem for Hamels of high pitch counts, limiting his innings in the process. He pitched into the seventh inning in just 10 of his 32 starts this year after reaching the seventh in 24 of his 33 starts last season.
There is also the line of thought that Hamels was overworked in 2008, when he threw a career-high 262 1/3 innings (including the playoffs) and got out of whack in the offseason while doing the celebrity victory lap that comes with winning World Series MVP honors.
Whatever the reason, the anxiety level is high as Hamels prepares to face the Yankees. He is considered so fragile that Manuel juggled his rotation to make sure Hamels pitched Game 3 at Citizens Bank Park instead of Game 2 at hostile Yankee Stadium.
Hamels sounds as if he has a better handle on the psychological aspect, because of Moyer and Martinez.
“I’ve found that you have to try to keep looking at the positives,” he said. “You can’t get wrapped up in what you’re doing wrong. You only get a certain amount of pitches to throw in a game, and you have to make every one of those pitches count.”
Tonight will tell if Hamels can turn back the clock to last October and put those words into action.
bhubbuch@nypost.com