Ad Disclosure
Derek Hill is Playing the Best Baseball of His Life and I’m Choosing to Believe it Will Never End
By Matt Schultz
Published:
The Phillies traded for Derek Hill on June 11th. Since then, the man has been playing the best baseball of his life.
Let’s take a look at the numbers.
In 51 games with the White Sox this season, Hill posted a slash line of .213/.284/.375 with a .659 OPS.
Before the season, he had career averages of .227/.278/.351, for a .629 OPS.
And in 23 games with the Phils – spanning a little over a month – Derek Hill has batted .327/.352/.538 for an .890 OPS.
He had always been decent against lefties, but this is a very, very big leap, and his elevation in play goes beyond just the slash line. As a Phillie, he’s logged 3 home runs, 8 RBIs, and 3 stolen bases. He ranks first on the Phillies in batting average (.327) and batting average on balls in play (.538). He’s second on the team in OPS (.890) and slugging (.538), and third in OBP (.352) and isolated power (.212). His 0.82 batting WAR ranks fourth among Phillies position players, and his total WAR ranks second among team outfielders, largely because of his insanely high defensive value (2.40 fielding WAR).
All of which is to say that, apparently, Derek Hill is good as hell now. And not just on the stat sheet, either. Hill is the kind of good you can plainly see with your eyes. He’s out there doing stuff like this:
Here’s the same catch but with a cool stat in the tweet:
Then, of course, was his iconic Juan Soto home run robbery:
And this clutch homer in Washington, when the Phils were down to their last strike of the game:
After going one hundred years in need of a right-handed bat, after having to endure the ups and downs of Adolis Garcia and Nick Castellanos, to have Derek Hill – a career platoon guy – come in and make this much of a difference has been such a pleasant surprise. But I will admit, from time to time, some darker, unpleasant questions about it do enter my mind: Is Derek Hill actually this good? He can’t actually be this good, right? He’s been on six other teams in his seven-year career; he’s probably closer to what he was pre-Phillies than what he is now, wouldn’t you think? You gotta imagine he’s going to regress to the mean any day now, right?
But I have made a decision: I am choosing to believe Derek Hill is, indeed, this good. The Phillies changed him somehow. He’s reliable. He’s more disciplined than ever. He’s fast. He can field. This is who he is now. There’s no going back. I will not back down from this.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com