43-Year-Old Rich Hill Not Stuck in His Ways (+)

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Jul 14, 2023
Rich Hill, Pittsburgh Pirates
Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Rich Hill delivers during the first inning of a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants in Pittsburgh, Friday, July 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

PITTSBURGH — Even though he may be the oldest active player in Major League Baseball, Rich Hill isn’t afraid to make some changes.

Hill is currently in his 19th season at the big league level, so you would think he would just stick with whatever has kept him around as long as he’s been doing it.

You’d be wrong.

Coming off of a poor start against the Arizona Diamondbacks at the end of the first half of the season, Hill decided to implement a change — a relatively big change.

In his first start of the second half against the San Francisco Giants on Friday night at PNC Park, Hill debuted a brand new pitch, and it helped him generate better results. By altering his grip on the baseball, Hill showed off a splitter.

“It’s a game of adjustments or continuously trying to get better,” Hill said. “It doesn’t matter how old you are or how long you’ve been around. I think realizing that there’s room to grow, continue to work on things that I can get better at. That was certainly something that I felt could be added into the pitch mix.”

Thanks in part to the new weapon to his arsenal, Hill turned in a quality start and allowed three runs across six innings pitched.

The veteran left-hander allowed seven hits, walked two and struck out a pair. He was efficient with 62 of his 91 pitches going for strikes.

“I thought he did a nice job. He kept us in the game,” said manager Derek Shelton “That’s a good lineup over there. Three runs, and (Hill) was able to get himself out of a couple jams, including the jam in the sixth, to get out of that. So, overall I thought he threw the ball pretty well.”

The decision came during the All-Star break, after Hill had allowed five runs in four innings against Arizona.

Hill and pitching coach Oscar Marin talked about getting more depth on the ball by altering his grip, and it worked for the crafty Hill.

“The grip I was using before, I was using a seam a little bit more than the one that,” Hill said. “Talking to Oscar actually yesterday, he said, ‘If you want to get a little bit more depth on it, get off of the seam.’ It was just a different grip that he showed me, and it really clicked for me. Between the couple days of throwing it and getting closer to feeling where I should be with it, his advice helped tremendously.”

Hill had never thrown a splitter in a game before prior to his 369th career appearance against the Giants on Friday.

Though he may be 43 years old, Hill is still a student of the game. He keeps up with trends around the league and is always looking for a competitive advantage.

“I think adding that in complements the fastball very well. And, understanding that it’s throughout the league, it’s been a high success pitch. I have messed around with it before, but not to the degree of buying into it the way that it is now. It’s something that, obviously, with the grip change and being able to have things really kind of click in place, it makes a lot more sense,” he said.
It will be interesting to see how Hill chooses to utilize his new offering moving forward. He estimates that he threw the split around 15-18% of the time against the Giants.
Hill doesn’t throw a 95 mph fastball. He needs to find different ways to induce weak contact and get the results he’s looking for.
Maybe this is what he needed to get the more consistent and better results he has been looking for.
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