The Athletics have agreed to terms with free agent left-hander Rich Hill, reports Robert Murray of Baseball Essential. The deal is pending a physical. Yahoo’s Jeff Passan tweets that it’s a one-year deal with a $6MM guarantee.
Yesterday, WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford reported that Hill was likely to sign a contract this week. Earlier tonight, SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo listed the A’s as one of the teams in the mix for hill, noting that one official involved in the bidding considered Oakland one of the favorites (links to Twitter). Passan notes (Twitter link) that Hill turned down a more lucrative offer from another club due to the promise of a spot in the club’s rotation.
Few would’ve believed prior to — or even 75 percent of the way through — the 2015 season that a payday like this was in the cards for Hill, who at 35 years of age had spent the past several seasons bouncing around the league as a lefty reliever. Hill’s claim to fame dated all the way back to 2007, when he punched out 183 batters in 195 innings of 3.92 ERA ball for the Cubs as a 27-year-old. Hill didn’t replicate that success in 2008, though, and injuries and poor performance limited his role around the league for the next eight seasons.
Released from the Nationals’ Triple-A club this summer, Hill latched on with the Red Sox — the same organization with which he spent the 2010-12 seasons. Despite three years in the organization, Hill logged just 31 2/3 big league innings in that stretch, but a strong season at Triple-A led the 2015 Sox to give him a few starts at season’s end, and Hill capitalized in more emphatic fashion than most could’ve imagined.
In 29 innings (four starts) with the Sox, Hill allowed a grand total of five earned runs, striking out 36 batters against just five walks to complement a 48.4 percent ground-ball rate. Hill ditched his two-seam fastball and reduced the usage of his four-seamer in 2015 as well, trading in some of his 90 mph for a dramatic increase in curveballs. The results were outstanding, and the endgame will be a guaranteed payday that is six times greater than Hill’s previous career-high single-season salary of $1MM.
Hill joins a rotation picture led by ace Sonny Gray but also featuring veteran righty Jesse Chavez and a slew of younger arms including Jesse Hahn, Chris Bassitt, Kendall Graveman, Sean Nolin and Aaron Brooks. Former mainstays Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin will hope to return to the fold after missing each of the past two seasons due to arm surgery, and lefty Drew Pomeranz is also an option for Oakland manager Bob Melvin (though he had greater success working out of the bullpen).
For the Athletics, it’s a risk to give $6MM to a pitcher with such a limited track record and a wide-ranging history of injuries, but the team has quite a bit of pitching depth and can reasonably absorb the blow if Hill misses a significant portion of the season on the disabled list. And, if Hill is able to deliver even a handful of starts resembling his September work in 2015, he could turn out to be one of the biggest free-agent bargains of the offseason.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Well, it’s official. I’m not getting a perfect score in the free agent prediction contest.
Great Ball park for Rich hill.
Glad he gets 6M. Good guy
He really his. Lost an infant son last year due to illness so I wish him well
Good man injuries stopped a promising career as a Cub then it went south and until last year never came back but I think he is back come July everybody going to want him: good luck Hill
Best of luck Hill, loved your run in Boston and I hope you can shine in Oakland.
Great park for him and if he’s anything like his September he might be one of the biggest bargains of winter – this is very reminiscent of the A’s signing Colon to a bargain deal.
I’m amazed that a 35-year-old pitcher who appeared in four games last season and 20 in the last two received $6 million. I wish Hill well.
His curveball/changeup/90+ mph fb are a deadly combo though
m.mlb.com/video/topic/8879974/v501998983/92515-hil…
Hitters don’t see many great CB pitchers. His CB is pretty much unhittable. Key is him being able to stay healthy or not.
If he pitches well they have a guy who has pretty good trade value at the deadline and could turn him into a decent prospect
Was just watching highlights of those 4 games and I’ll be damned if he didn’t look like a fairly unhittable ace in all 4 of those games – looks like he finally figured it out, might be the next RA Dickey.
Love this deal for both sides. Hill only has to reach replacement level in order to be worth more than this. He should be able to swing that as a starter if he can go 100 innings or so. He’ll fit well with the A’s. Low risk high reward guy with a killer curveball.
Replacement level in theory is worth the major league minimum. He needs less than 1 WAR in order to provide surplus value. I thought this was a bit of an overpay at first for a guy who has essentially been a journeyman lefty until you put it into perspective.
Sorry, I meant average player, which would be 2 fWAR, which would easily be worth over twice the contract. It shouldn’t be hard to get to 2 fWAR if he gets 100 innings. Not sure why I said replacement level instead.
Amazing how a guy who was never really good can get a solid contract after an amazing 29 IP in September during an age 35 season
Good for him. I figured there’d be little chance of him signing with Boston considering the abundance of pitchers they don’t know what to do with already, but I kinda hoped. I was very impressed with him, and had a feeling he was going to get a legit shot this year. Best of luck to him this season.
No way! I predicted A’s in the prediction contest as a wild guess.
This is the most A’s signing ever though.
Hey, if I waas an A’s fan i would be happy. Good luck Mr Hill
More money than I expected him to get, but Rich Hill is a decent pickup. I heard that my Rays were interested in him and I was pretty intrigued after reading up on him. Low risk high reward move here by a smart club.
I wonder which team had the more lucrative offer?
Hill was released by the Nats at a time when they started to have middle relief problems and Hill had very good numbers at AAA. I don’t get it.
I new this guy was going to the athletics, surprised he got 6mil, but a nice retirement gift, ill be real surprised if he’s not on the DL before the trade deadline