How Hill uses sidearm release to stay sharp

BRADENTON, Fla. -- Over the last several years, pitch tunneling has carved out a prominent space in the evaluation of pitchers. The short clips in which pitchers effectively tunnel consistently generates thousands of likes and retweets. Rich Hill isn’t anti-tunneling, so to say, but baseball’s oldest player possesses his own means of setting down batters.

For nearly a decade, Hill, when he’s not mentoring the next generation of pitchers, has utilized two different arm slots, prioritizing the standard three-quarters delivery, but mixing in a healthy amount of sidearm for one of his breaking balls. Since debuting nearly two decades ago, that ability to drop down to a sidearm release evolved from an occasional novelty to an invaluable aspect of his identity as a pitcher.

“Now, you see the value in the horizontal break that you’re getting on a breaking ball from down there when it’s breaking two feet,” said Hill, who allowed one run across three innings in the Pirates’ 10-7 loss to the Tigers on Thursday. “Now that we’re able to quantify it because of the technology, now we can apply it to our repertoire of pitches.”

At this stage, Hill employs a three-quarters release when throwing his fastball, cutter and curveball; a sidearm release point when throwing his slider; and both a three-quarters and sidearm release point when throwing his changeup. It’s not surprising, then, that he owns one of the more unique release charts of any pitcher in baseball.

Not all of Hill’s sidearm sliders are created equal. Hill had an average vertical release point of 4.10 feet, but last season, Hill got as high as 4.94 feet and as low as 3.13 feet, the latter of which puts Hill nearly parallel to the ground. As for his entire career, Hill has gotten as low as 2.91 feet, a space that begins to flirt with submarine territory.

The variance in Hill’s release points of his changeups is even more fascinating, as he’ll throw the pitch from both a three-quarters and sidearm slot. The vertical release point for Hill’s changeup last season averaged out to 5.02 feet, but he fired a changeup as high as 6.11 feet and as low as 3.79 feet. Hill’s decision of arm slot for his changeup is based on how he feels on a given day, as well as how a hitter reacts to his pitches.

“You’re coming in at different angles -- if we want to say horizontal and vertical axis points -- different kinds of run on the ball, different kinds of break on the ball,” Hill said. “You’re going to have all those elements that are going to be separators, and those are going to be the difference maker from pitch-to-pitch.”

The inception of his sidearm delivery dates back to when Hill came up with the Cubs in 2005. Hill occasionally utilized a sidearm delivery to surprise left-handed hitters, but his coaches emphasized the traditional pillars of pitching: commanding the fastball, maintaining a consistent delivery, moving the ball to both sides of the plate.

Hill struggled to control the strike zone early on, admitting he didn’t have a good idea of how to sequence pitches, so the sidearm delivery didn’t become prominent during the infancy of his career. In time, it became the means of keeping Hill’s career afloat.

In 2010, Hill metamorphosed into a full-time sidearmer out of necessity. Coming off labrum surgery in August 2009, Hill wasn’t strong enough to throw from a three-quarters release point, but was strong enough to pitch as a sidearmer. With Triple-A Memphis, an affiliate of the Cardinals, Hill transitioned into a true sidearm pitcher.

Hill stuck with the delivery for five seasons, but upon overhauling his body and regaining shoulder strength, Hill reintroduced his three-quarters arm slot upon joining the Red Sox in 2015. Still, he didn’t abandon his sidearm days. Pitching coach Brian Bannister helped Hill understand the value of altering his arm angle and how it could alter the shape of his breaking ball. Instead of opting for one arm slot or the other, Hill began utilizing both.

“It was another opportunity to be able to design and be creative and make a new path of survival for myself to pitch at the highest level,” Hill said.

Thanks to that creativity, that willingness to adapt, the 42-year-old continues to pitch at baseball’s highest level.