It's time to start Rich Hill

[KingKongvs.Godzilla]

judging from his AA numbers, it would appear that he was locating his fastball quite well. and it has been a plus pitch for him in the past, so what makes you think that it's too straight and he doesn't locate it?

 

The HR rate. Check out guys like Greinke and Milton. OK, even very good control...but horrible disgusting HR rates.

 

What that implies to me is that they:

 

A) Can't locate their fastball.

 

OR

 

B) Chuck the fastball up there and hope to fool hitters...which it rarely does as you move up.

 

I mean look at Greinke's minor league stats, it doesn't LOOK like he gives up a boatload of HRs but thats because he had such great breaking stuff and you can be damn good in the minors with decent velocity and great breaking stuff. Now balls fly out of the park against him, why? When you watch him pitch he is just tossing fastballs hoping it gets by hitters down the middle.

 

After seeing Hill I wasn't so shocked as to why when his control got better but his HR rate shot up. His fastball isn't anything special, and he doesn't even really seem to try to locate it.

 

MAYBE I'm wrong, but really from what I've seen in him, and from what I've seen of guys like him...I definitely don't see this as unreasonable.

 

i just wouldn't compare hill to milton based on minor league numbers. milton has always had a terrible G/F ratio, his career average is .60. it's hard to maintain any sort of success with a ratio like that. most likely, he should be out of the league.

 

generally i associate HR-rate with a poor G/F ratio, which just means that his fastball doesn't have SINKING action.

 

milton gives up a HR every 5.9 innings, or has during his career, and the numbers haven't varied much from year to year, he's rock solid in his medicority.

 

zito's career G/F ratio isn't a whole lot better, but it consistently better: .87. In addition, he's given up a HR every 10 innings. I'd suggest this is a product of being a much more deceptive pitcher, if not being a great groundball pitcher.

 

I can't find Hill's overall G/F ratio, but he appears to be better than milton, granted in a much smaller sample size. His major league G/F ratio is 1.07. His career major/minor league HR-rate is one home run every 10.3 innings, which is actually better than Zito's, while his G/F ratio last season in 23 innings was better than Zito's career ratio.

 

meaning that either hill is just much more deceptive than milton or has much better sinking action on his fastball. i think the milton comparisons for hill are premature, let the kid see what he can do in 10 starts.

 

1. We have no idea what Rich Hill's minor league G/F is because no site seems to have it.

 

2. I ended up looking and focusing more and Greinke because I saw some of Greinke's tendencies and habits in Hill. I showed you the stats, they both have the same kind of career trends. Greinke was solid with the HRs in the lower minors, where a guy with great breaking stuff is more than likely to get away with chucking a decent fastball up there. But as both he and Hill moved up, their HR rates sky rockected. With Hill I think the chucking it down the middle might have been a new thing, cause his control was horrible before.

 

Basically my opinion of Hill is that we should have traded him while he has seemingly high value. We could have netted a Milton Bradley or someone like Sledge.

 

He's going to have a MAJOR problem with the long ball up here, I don't doubt that for a second.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

BA has G/F numbers for this year. Hill had a 0.77 at WT, and a 1.02 at Iowa.

[Magnetic Curses]

BA has G/F numbers for this year. Hill had a 0.77 at WT, and a 1.02 at Iowa.

 

average. by no means terrible.