Baltimore Orioles Interested In Left-Handed Pitcher Rich Hill

The Baltimore Orioles are interested in 36-year-old pitcher Rich Hill, who played for the Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Dodgers last year.

The MLB offseason continues to heat up and rumors are starting to fly. Most recently, the Baltimore Orioles are among five other teams currently interested in signing left-handed pitcher Rich Hill, according to ESPN’s Jim Bowden.

While the Orioles interest is not as high as other teams, if the Orioles did sign Hill, it would be a reunion between the two teams, as Hill played in Baltimore in 2009, though it wasn’t a very successful year, as he pitched 57.2 innings with a 7.80 ERA.

Hill is coming off of a career year, an incredibly surprising feat for a 36-year-old pitcher, especially one such as Hill who has had so many injury issues for his career.

Last season, over 110.1 innings and 20 starts, Hill pitched an outstanding 2.12 ERA with a 1.00 WHIP and a 10.52 K/9. His fastball was just as fast as it’s ever been in his career, averaging 90.2 MPH, and the pitch’s movement increased, which lead to it striking out pitchers over 30% of the time, better than it ever has in his career.

While the numbers look nice for Hill, there’s two things that make me want the Orioles to stay as far away from him as possible. The first and most obvious red flag is his age and injury history.

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Yes, he pitched 110.1 innings last year and started 20 games, and that’s great, but I don’t trust that to happen again. Could it happen again? Yes. Can you count on it happening again? No, I don’t think you can. The guy is 36, he doesn’t have many more years left in him in the MLB.

The second issue is, he’s going to command a huge price tag. He just had an incredible season, and because of that, he won’t go for cheap. More than likely, Hill will sign for something in the $16-17M per year range, and that’s not something the Orioles can afford, especially if they want to address the other major issues the team has.

I wouldn’t be shocked if Hill has another good year next season, last year wasn’t a fluke, as evidenced by his 2.39 FIP and .275 BABIP. There’s some regression in order, sure, but I don’t think he’ll start being terrible all of a sudden.

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The main issue with Hill is health and age, and as such, I don’t think he’ll be worth the money that the Orioles would have to pay him. Hopefully they’ll stay away and let someone else overpay him.