Another round mound, another rebound for Hill
The 45-year-old lefthander performed for his 14th MLB team Tuesday, and was the same as he ever was.
Rich Hill was there before ghost runners, before pitch clocks, before pitchers quit hitting, before the leagues essentially disappeared, before wild-card series, before streaming, before exit velocity, spin rate and launch angle.
He was there when relievers didn’t pitch the first inning. He has pitched in 38 major league ballparks, including both Yankee Stadiums, Turner Field, Shea Stadium and the place where only the Dolphins play today. Both Tropicana Field and the Oakland Coliseum were his home bases, although he’s had 14 of them, tying Edwin Jackson, the alltime leader.
He’s pitched in two World Series. He lasted four days with the Angels, appearing in both games of a doubleheader and getting released. He’s seen labrum surgery, Tommy John surgery, fire and rain. He and his wife Caitlin had a two-month-old son, Brooks, who died of a brain disorder in 2014.
On Tuesday night he put on yet another uniform, this one issued by the Kansas City Royals, who have one of the best rotations in baseball, but found themselves in need of a 45-year-old, lefthanded pilgrim. Hill did what he normally does. He went five innings with one earned run, got hurt by two errors in the same inning, and left after he gave up his first extra-base hit of the night, to the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong. The Royals lost, 6-0, but Hill can reasonably expect to start again. As little as we ask of starting pitchers these days, why not?
“When I was getting ready for the season I thought there was still something I could give,” Hill said when it was over. “As long as I feel that way I’m going to be ready for the challenge, ready to bring the same effort and intensity.”
Hill started the season in Triple-A, with Omaha. One of his strengths is recognizing that his dignity will survive wherever he pitches. He had not pitched for 11 months when he signed with the Long Island Ducks, in 2015. The Ducks are an Independent League team, which means that no major league team has any connection with their players. You have to startle somebody to get attention, and in two starts Hill struck out 21 batters over 11 innings. Boston, his hometown team, signed him for the second time, and Hill fanned 36 batters in four September games. A couple of months later Oakland signed him for one year, $6 million. So Hill doesn’t base his dreams on wishful thinking. He knows that he has a curveball that remains hard to hit, and he knows he can control it. He would be involved in 10 major league transactions from then on, including two more with Boston.
Hill’s finest and most frustrating days came with the Dodgers. He had pitched well enough in Oakland to become a commodity at the 2016 trade deadline. He was perfect through seven innings at Miami but was removed from the game, which prompted an all-out attack on the bubble gum and sunflower seeds in the dugout, although that’s standard operating procedure for Hill. In the NLCS he went six innings and gave up two hits, and the Dodgers beat the eventual champion Cubs and Jake Arrieta, the top pitcher in the game at the time. After the season Hill signed a 3-year deal for $48 million. Later, former pitcher and current mental coach Bob Tewksbury recalled conversing with Hill in the dugout at Triple-A Pawtucket, the Red Sox affiliate. It was 2005. “I really think I can start again,” Hill told him. In his book Ninety Percent Mental, which he wrote with Scott Miller, Tewksbury said: “My first thought was simple. This guy is out of his mind.”
The next two years Hill went 23-13 for Dodger teams that got to the World Series. In 2017 he had a perfect game against Pittsburgh until Logan Forsythe’s error in the ninth, and he had a no-hitter until Josh Harrison’s home run in the 10th.
In the 2018 World Series, the Dodgers trailed Boston 2-0 but won Game 3 in 18 innings, and Hill had given up one hit in six and one-third innings and led 4-0. At that point he had struck out seven and thrown 22 called strikes. But the answers were inside the motherboards in the analytics room, not on the field, and the Dodgers removed Hill in favor of Scott Alexander. The cake collapsed, the dominos tumbled, and the Red Sox won, 9-6, and took the Series the next night. In his three-plus Dodger seasons Hill had a 3.16 ERA and an excellent WHIP of 1.079.
The next stop was Minnesota and he hasn’t spent more than one year with the same team since.
You can amass a lot of teammates that way. When Hill got to Wrigley Field Tuesday, Justin Turner was waiting with a blue T-shirt that proclaimed, “Everything Hurts.” Turner was the leader of the Dodgers when Hill was there. Greg Maddux, Kerry Wood and Mark Prior were on the Cubs’ team when Hill broke in. David Ortiz was his teammate in Boston. Hill played for Terry Francona twice, for Lou Piniella and Dusty Baker and Joe Girardi and Dave Roberts.. Jac Caglianone, a Royals’ rookie, is 23 years younger than Hill.
There’s a defiance to guys like Hill and Jackson and Dick Littlefield and Mike Morgan. Littlefield pitched for 10 major league teams at a time when there were only 16. Morgan made 12 stops. Octavio Dotel, who died earlier this season, wore 13 different jerseys in 15 years. For those travelers, somebody takes away the chair when October comes, and it’s rare that you’ll know by Christmas what the next year will bring. But all those rejections are soothed when somebody calls, and offers a bottom line to sign, and a stamp for your passport.
Fourteen teams have asked Hill to pitch for them, a total of 18 times. His phone keeps pinging. He remains in a world where lefthandedness is preferable. So the question isn’t why Hill continues to do this. The question is, wouldn’t you?
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Sadly only a few days separated us from seeing a potential Hill vs. Jesse Chavez head-to-head start. Baseball would've been better for that. Both are easy answers in The Immaculate Grid.
I've always been a Rich Hill fan, helluva competitor. Great article Mark, thank you.