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Is Rich over the Hill?
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Post by sibbysisti on Sept 26, 2015 7:30:19 GMT -5
He's come out of nowhere and shocked the world!! It' likely he gets another start, either the final game of the Yankee series, or in Cleveland next week. What happens if he puts in another performance like the three he's has so far as a starting pitcher.
Hill has a 1.17 era thus far averaging almost eight IP per start. His K numbers have been consistently high throughout his career.
On the down side he'll be 36 in ST. Does Dombrowski roll the dice in offering him a two year contract and hope that between him and Buchholz someone will emerge as an elite starter? Or combine to fill a top spot in the rotation? This way he can use his cache of prospects to assemble a solid bullpen.
A lot will depend on Hill's final appearance.
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Post by RedSoxStats on Sept 26, 2015 7:41:04 GMT -5
I think there's a better chance of the Red Sox releasing Moncada than Hill being in the rotation next year even if he throws a 12 inning perfect game in his last start.
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Post by thegoo13 on Sept 26, 2015 9:06:20 GMT -5
I think there's a better chance of the Red Sox releasing Moncada than Hill being in the rotation next year even if he throws a 12 inning perfect game in his last start. You're right. Why would Sox want someone who gets guys out? That would be stupid. Ask Joe Kelly. Odds of this run mr. Hill is on lasting are long granted but nevertheless he is here now doing it. To automatically dismiss him out of hand is short sighted.
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nomar
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Post by nomar on Sept 26, 2015 9:25:38 GMT -5
They can hopefully keep him here at least in the bullpen. He won't be expensive so the injury risk wouldn't matter too much, and it would give us another backup starter in case of injury. Does he qualify as a low mileage arm?
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Post by artfuldodger on Sept 26, 2015 9:34:54 GMT -5
Worth it on an incentive laden contract for 2 years.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Sept 26, 2015 9:37:57 GMT -5
Let's get real. Hill has been in the majors for 11 years, and he has all of 500 innings under his belt. He's gone over 100 innings once, over 50 just three times. The 23 he's put in with the Sox this time around ranks fifth in that list, right below the 23.2 he put up in his rookie year.
His stuff is very good, it always has been. I'd like to see the team make him an offer. But in no way should he be promised a starting pitching spot. His track record is one of endless disappointment. Maybe he's past all that, but you'd be crazy as a GM to bet on it.
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Post by soxcentral on Sept 26, 2015 10:00:02 GMT -5
Let's get real. Hill has been in the majors for 11 years, and he has all of 500 innings under his belt. He's gone over 100 innings once, over 50 just three times. The 23 he's put in with the Sox this time around ranks fifth in that list, right below the 23.2 he put up in his rookie year. His stuff is very good, it always has been. I'd like to see the team make him an offer. But in no way should he be promised a starting pitching spot. His track record is one of endless disappointment. Maybe he's past all that, but you'd be crazy as a GM to bet on it. I agree. Would love to see a low base ($1-$2 million) with heavy incentives for IP and performance that could take it to $8m or more. And a battle for the 5th spot between Hill and Wright seems reasonable. If he's anything more than that for a sustained period of time, all the better.
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Post by RedSoxStats on Sept 26, 2015 10:07:04 GMT -5
And a battle for the 5th spot between Hill and Wright seems reasonable. If he's anything more than that for a sustained period of time, all the better. Hill or Wright as the #5 instead of Miley, Owens or Kelly? Seems completely unreasonable.
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Post by blizzards39 on Sept 26, 2015 10:08:46 GMT -5
He's come out of nowhere and shocked the world!! It' likely he gets another start, either the final game of the Yankee series, or in Cleveland next week. What happens if he puts in another performance like the three he's has so far as a starting pitcher. Hill has a 1.17 era thus far averaging almost eight IP per start. His K numbers have been consistently high throughout his career. On the down side he'll be 36 in ST. Does Dombrowski roll the dice in offering him a two year contract and hope that between him and Buchholz someone will emerge as an elite starter? Or combine to fill a top spot in the rotation? This way he can use his cache of prospects to assemble a solid bullpen. A lot will depend on Hill's final appearance. This is the strategy that the Sox have been going with in the rotation for quite some time now with some poor results. The last time that they realized that we needed an ace they went and got Schilling and Pedro. Thats what this team needs, not more Hills, Peavys, Smoltz, Mastersons, Porcellos, Mileys...................
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Post by cheers on Sept 26, 2015 10:08:58 GMT -5
Is Hill going to give the Sox 200 innings? Clearly, no. Could he be the bridge to Buchholz not picking up a baseball until mid-May (thereby MAYBE being useful for a stretch run)? Perhaps. I agree with soxcentral. $1.5 mil with incentives is a pretty cheap risk.
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Post by soxcentral on Sept 26, 2015 10:18:20 GMT -5
And a battle for the 5th spot between Hill and Wright seems reasonable. If he's anything more than that for a sustained period of time, all the better. Hill or Wright as the #5 instead of Miley, Owens or Kelly? Seems completely unreasonable. Well, kind of. Miley I'd be looking to trade, Kelly would be my #4, and Owens would be my AAA depth option to begin the year.
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Post by bostonfanct on Sept 26, 2015 10:42:19 GMT -5
certainly over the hill, I think the hill is generally early 30's? I do think he has a couple more years before you say his career is over. i imagine next year if they are in the ALCS and its game 3 or 4, I am confident about starting this guy. that curve is amazing!
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 26, 2015 10:51:42 GMT -5
I've been driving the Rich Hill bandwagon for years and I feel really self-congratulatory right now. I'm walking through my life patting myself on the back, Barry Horowitz style.
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Post by p23w on Sept 26, 2015 11:07:10 GMT -5
Just replacing Breslow with Hill, this team is better on two fronts. A long reliever you won't be nervous about when asked to throw a spot start. Odds are that Hill would be serviceable for more IP than Breslow has been. Possible too that Hill could have a mentor type relationship with the other young LHSP's. I think 75 IP from Hill is reasonable. Anything over 100 IP and either Hill is en fuego or Sox are in the playoffs, or both.
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gerry
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Post by gerry on Sept 26, 2015 11:20:10 GMT -5
I've been driving the Rich Hill bandwagon for years and I feel really self-congratulatory right now. I'm walking through my life patting myself on the back, Barry Horowitz style. He deserves a band wagon. Is it possible that, having always been a good pitcher, that after 500 innings and years of extreme trial and error, he has figured something out at age 35? If he were ERod, Owens, Johnson coming up from AAA and pitching like this, there would be talk of a Cy Young. IMO his history of success in the Majors makes these three amazing performances more predictive than if he were a rookie. Yhere is something there worthy of keeping on the team.
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gerry
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Post by gerry on Sept 26, 2015 11:23:32 GMT -5
I've been driving the Rich Hill bandwagon for years and I feel really self-congratulatory right now. I'm walking through my life patting myself on the back, Barry Horowitz style. He deserves a band wagon. Is it possible that, having always been a good pitcher, that after 500 innings and years of extreme trial and error, he has figured something out at age 35? If he were ERod, Owens, Johnson coming up from AAA and pitching like this, there would be talk of a Cy Young. IMO his history of success in the Majors makes these three amazing performances more predictive than if he were a rookie. There is something here worthy of keeping on the team.
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 26, 2015 11:53:19 GMT -5
I've been driving the Rich Hill bandwagon for years and I feel really self-congratulatory right now. I'm walking through my life patting myself on the back, Barry Horowitz style. He deserves a band wagon. Is it possible that, having always been a good pitcher, that after 500 innings and years of extreme trial and error, he has figured something out at age 35? If he were ERod, Owens, Johnson coming up from AAA and pitching like this, there would be talk of a Cy Young. IMO his history of success in the Majors makes these three amazing performances more predictive than if he were a rookie. Yhere is something there worthy of keeping on the team. I don't think he's figured it out, I think he's always been really good. He's just been so injury-prone that he's lost opportunities and missed out on roster spots because teams couldn't commit to him. Look at his 2012 season: He was outstanding and then got hurt and missed three months, returning at the very end of the season. Frankly, this is a level of risk aversion I don't understand. With a starting pitcher, a durable mediocrity has a lot of value. But as your seventh reliever? Give me the high upside guy with a high chance of breaking down every time. The dropoff in expected value from your seventh to eighth reliever isn't going to be huge anyway. If you bring Hill into camp and he pitches like Rich Hill, that's great. If he breaks again, you turn to Dana Eveland or whoever.
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jimoh
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Post by jimoh on Sept 26, 2015 12:08:43 GMT -5
But the walks? 4.2/9 career, 5.0 in 2012 which you cite as him being "outstanding." He's been under 3 a couple of times and those were good years, but the control he's shown in these three starts is very different from the rest of his career. That said, I'm all for trying to keep him, though the risk of injury seems gradysizemoresque.
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Post by redsoxduck on Sept 26, 2015 12:27:38 GMT -5
On a one year deal, I think he's good depth. Have him as a lefty out of the pen and the #6 or #7 starter. As long as he keeps the walks in check, Hill would be a good player to have around
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 26, 2015 12:46:04 GMT -5
Let's get real. Hill has been in the majors for 11 years, and he has all of 500 innings under his belt. He's gone over 100 innings once, over 50 just three times. The 23 he's put in with the Sox this time around ranks fifth in that list, right below the 23.2 he put up in his rookie year. His stuff is very good, it always has been. I'd like to see the team make him an offer. But in no way should he be promised a starting pitching spot. His track record is one of endless disappointment. Maybe he's past all that, but you'd be crazy as a GM to bet on it. He deserves a band wagon. Is it possible that, having always been a good pitcher, that after 500 innings and years of extreme trial and error, he has figured something out at age 35? If he were ERod, Owens, Johnson coming up from AAA and pitching like this, there would be talk of a Cy Young. IMO his history of success in the Majors makes these three amazing performances more predictive than if he were a rookie. Yhere is something there worthy of keeping on the team. I don't think he's figured it out, I think he's always been really good. He's just been so injury-prone that he's lost opportunities and missed out on roster spots because teams couldn't commit to him. Look at his 2012 season: He was outstanding and then got hurt and missed three months, returning at the very end of the season. Frankly, this is a level of risk aversion I don't understand. With a starting pitcher, a durable mediocrity has a lot of value. But as your seventh reliever? Give me the high upside guy with a high chance of breaking down every time. The dropoff in expected value from your seventh to eighth reliever isn't going to be huge anyway. If you bring Hill into camp and he pitches like Rich Hill, that's great. If he breaks again, you turn to Dana Eveland or whoever. But the walks? 4.2/9 career, 5.0 in 2012 which you cite as him being "outstanding." He's been under 3 a couple of times and those were good years, but the control he's shown in these three starts is very different from the rest of his career.That said, I'm all for trying to keep him, though the risk of injury seems gradysizemoresque. There's something folks are missing that makes the odds of this Rich Hill being really, truly better than any previous version of Rich Hill immensely more likely. He has never thrown the ball like this before. It's an entire new arm slot, pretty much midway between his pre-injury overhand delivery and his post-injury sidearm one. And of course, there was a ton of room between those. Go to FanGraphs and find the very recent article about him, and find my comment, which gives the pitch/fx release point data. I'd do it myself if I weren't doing this from my roommate's laptop (and no, Macs are not intuiyivelu obvious to use if you've spent your life on a PC, and I think I'll leave that typo in as evidence of my wrestling with this keyboard!), after mine died Tuesday night (which is why I've disappeared. New desktop arrives Monday). Again: he has always had great stuff, but his shaky control and arm problems turned him into a mediocrity. So far, with the new delivery, he's had extraordinary command and control. He's obviously not going to have that kind of command every start, but this is clearly how good he can be, and he should still be nicely effective on a day when he isn't at his best. And had my laptop not died, I would have urged signing him to a new contract before this last start, because his price was likely to go up. Which it did. They might think about a nice one-year guarantee plus a bigger team option for the season after, and maybe a vesting option for games or IP. Whatever it takes. With his age and history, yes, there's a much bigger question about quantity than quality. But as someone pointed out, he's a great guy to have on a staff that has Clay Buchholz as it's #2. And adding Hill to the SP depth chart makes up for the fact that we won't be able to include Brian Johnson on it with any confidence, even if he is prescribed rest rather than surgery.
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Post by James Dunne on Sept 26, 2015 14:05:15 GMT -5
It's also worth noting that, from 2010 to 2014 (roughly corresponding to his time in the bullpen) 16% of his walks were intentional. That's about a 0.9 BB/9 difference, a really significant (read: stupid) percentage for a guy who is striking out 28.1% of batters..
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Post by wcsoxfan on Sept 26, 2015 14:36:53 GMT -5
It's also worth noting that, from 2010 to 2014 (roughly corresponding to his time in the bullpen) 16% of his walks were intentional. That's about a 0.9 BB/9 difference, a really significant (read: stupid) percentage for a guy who is striking out 28.1% of batters.. The biggest issue with his 2010-2014 is the small sample and 6 of the 8 IBB came against RHB, which would make sense since he was a LH relief pitcher primarily being used to get LHBs out. (over that 5 year stretch he threw a total of 75.2 innings - really amazing how few innings he has thrown at the MLB level) Even taking off the 0.9 IBB he is still at 5 un-intentional walks per 9IP (with a higher walk rate vs lefties that righties). What he's doing now is very very different. I hope he can continue to repeat the delivery with that new arm slot.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Sept 26, 2015 14:42:02 GMT -5
I'll have to admit that the command has been superior, off the charts really. He's put pitches exactly where he wants them, at least over this very small 3-game sample. And his career K/9 is 8.8, so the strikeouts are not new. I'd guess the Angels, for one, would love to have him back with what he's shown.
I hope the team sees fit to make him a good offer, one with those incentives, but I would imagine they'll be reluctant to include him as a sure thing in next year's rotation. The guy has a history and it does include injuries.
Also, a correction to my original post. The 23 innings this year is 6th in that list, not 5th.
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Post by m1keyboots on Sept 26, 2015 16:03:04 GMT -5
I've been driving the Rich Hill bandwagon for years and I feel really self-congratulatory right now. I'm walking through my life patting myself on the back, Barry Horowitz style. Maybe be careful, I did the same with JBJ breaking out, and that "future 800 ops" milk is turning a tiny bit sour for me
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Post by m1keyboots on Sept 26, 2015 16:04:02 GMT -5
I'll have to admit that the command has been superior, off the charts really. He's put pitches exactly where he wants them, at least over this very small 3-game sample. And his career K/9 is 8.8, so the strikeouts are not new. I'd guess the Angels, for one, would love to have him back with what he's shown. I hope the team sees fit to make him a good offer, one with those incentives, but I would imagine they'll be reluctant to include him as a sure thing in next year's rotation. The guy has a history and it does include injuries. Also, a correction to my original post. The 23 innings this year is 6 th in that list, not 5 th. What's so strange is the Nats released him bc of age and him walking 20 or so guys in as many innings.
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