CHICAGO – With the Yankees rained out on August 6, Tim Hill spent the evening watching his former team play.
The White Sox, working on one of the most appalling seasons in major league history, broke a 21-game losing streak that night with a win over the Athletics. The sorry stretch tied an American League record, so Hill took pleasure in its end after pitching for Chicago earlier this season.
“I was happy for them, happy for the boys over there,” the reliever told the Daily News. “Up here, we always want to win. So to lose that many games in a row, I wanted to see my boys snap out of it, because I know it’s not fun.”
Hill, who signed with the Yankees on June 20 after being released by the Sox, will return to the South Side with the Bombers on Monday.
A lot has changed since he last played at Guaranteed Rate Field, as the White Sox traded a few of his former teammates before the deadline. The 28-91 team also fired manager Pedro Grifol and three coaches after that losing streak ended.
Grady Sizemore, a former All-Star in Cleveland, was named the interim skipper.
Hill, meanwhile, has seen his season turn around since going from baseball’s lowliest team to one of its best. The 34-year-old lefty had a 5.87 ERA over 23 innings with the White Sox, but that number has improved to 2.91 over 21.2 frames with the Yankees.
The Yankees reasoned that Hill, a groundball pitcher, had been unlucky in Chicago. Several metrics consider the White Sox the worst defensive team by a wide margin, making them an especially poor match for the side-armer’s skillset.
“That’s all part of it,” manager Aaron Boone said when the Yankees first acquired Hill. “Hopefully, the way he’s throwing the ball will start to regulate a little bit, too. I think he can help us.”
Boone said that Hill’s underlying metrics showed the Yankees were adding a better pitcher than the surface numbers indicated. At the time of his arrival, Hill had a 3.45 expected ERA, a Barrell% in the 99th percentile and a groundball percentage in the 98th percentile.
He has maintained similar numbers in New York while finding actual success with a top-10 defense behind him.
“I felt like I was throwing the ball better than the results that I was getting,” Hill said of his White Sox stint. “I’m not really one to point fingers and say why or why not, but it’s just the fact of what was happening. I felt good about the way I was throwing the ball and the way the ball was coming out of my hand. So it’s not to say that I couldn’t have turned it around over there. It just really never developed.”
Aside from a better defense, Hill said not much else has changed since he’s joined the Yankees.
He’s been working on a new slider grip, though it’s not ready for consistent in-game usage yet. Hill has thrown sliders in the past, but he said he’s never had a good one.
With or without the breaking ball, the Yankees are counting on Hill to keep up the good work. He is the only southpaw in their pen after they traded Caleb Ferguson, though a few righties are effective against left-handed hitters.
Hill, meanwhile, is thankful for the time he spent with the White Sox, even if he struggled there.
Last year, Keynan Middleton bashed Chicago’s culture after the Yankees acquired him from the White Sox. Among other issues, the righty ripped the directionless club for having “no rules” under Grifol.
“You have rookies sleeping in the bullpen during the game,” Middleton, now a Cardinal, said at the time. “You have guys missing meetings. You have guys missing PFPs, and there’s no consequences for any of this stuff.”
When asked about Middleton’s review, Hill offered a different perspective.
“I’m not gonna bad mouth Chicago at all,” he said. “I’m glad I went over there. There’s a lot of good people over there. I’ve made some good relationships and made some good friends over there. So the last thing I want to do is bad mouth them.”
That said, Hill is certainly happy with his transition from an all-time bottom feeder to a contender.
“The Yankees are the Yankees,” he said. “The New York Yankees are one of the biggest organizations in sports. Period. It’s a winning culture. It’s hard to explain until you’re in it. But I think what they got going on over here is pretty special.”