DENVER -- What might have been a nightmare scenario during his rookie season of 2025 became Rockies right-handed reliever Jaden Hill’s dream come true during the eighth inning Saturday night.
Left-handed hitters posted a .280 batting average against Hill last year. But changes over the winter have led to such early-season success that manager Warren Schaeffer trusted him in the eighth against Dodgers Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Tucker, Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy with a one-run lead.
That inning ended with Hill needing just three pitches to force Muncy into a grounder to second base with the bases loaded. Victor Vodnik similarly escaped the ninth inning for a confidence-building 4-3 victory before a sellout crowd of 47,925 at Coors Field.
“It’s a testament to the hard work I put in, the trust I put in the coaches and the trust that they put into me from Spring Training, when we first met and the first conversation,” said Hill, who has limited left-handed hitters to a .176 batting average this season.
Now, with experience and a new strategy, he is a key part of a Rockies’ bullpen that saw scoreless pitching from Brennan Bernardino (the bullpen’s only left-hander), Hill and Vodnik lower the collective relief ERA to 2.97 for the season and 0.68 over the last five games.
“There’s some stuff that has been changed, in Spring Training with the new pitching coaches,” Schaeffer said. “Usage has been a lot different this year -- using that back-foot slider to lefties. [Hill] didn’t do a lot of that last year.
“He has a lot more weapons to work with.”
The Rockies selected Hill out of LSU in the second round in 2021. There was talent, but also mystery. He threw just two games as a freshman and four as a sophomore during pandemic-shortened 2020. In ‘21, he had seven starts before undergoing Tommy John surgery after 29 2/3 innings. Early in his pro career, Hill struggled to stay healthy as a starter.
When converted to relief, he brought an upper-90s fastball and a changeup that was his better pitch. The slider had to be rebuilt after the elbow surgery, and he needed experience throwing it.
With first base open, Hill walked Teoscar Hernández while pitching carefully, or as he put it, “trusting the game plan, trying to stay away knowing that we can get the next batter if needed.”
The inning started weird when catcher Hunter Goodman’s glove touched Ohtani’s bat -- “It paused me for a second because that’s never happened with me pitching before,” Hill said. Tucker singled, Andy Pages struck out right-on-right, and Freeman flied to deep center.
The Muncy at-bat was all of three pitches, but that’s all it took to illustrate Hill’s improvement.
1. First-pitch slider, swinging strike
Hill appeared in nine games at the end of 2024 (5.09 ERA). After missing the early part of the ‘25 season with a right hamstring injury, Hill posted a promising 3.38 ERA in 28 appearances. It’s true that lefties were a problem, but Schaeffer, new pitching coach Alon Leichman, new assistant pitching coach Gabe Ribas and new bullpen coach Matt Buschmann believed Hill possessed the answers.
“I changed my sights, my mentality, counts when to use it -- same pitch, different sites,” Hill said. “That’s helped a lot with my misses. Last year, my misses were really bad.”
This pitch to Muncy was a classic swing-and-miss, back-foot slider -- barely off the plate inside.
2. Changeup for a swinging strike
Making changes is fine, but in comparison to the slider Hill’s changeup is barely changed.
“I’m using it the exact same,” he said. “It’s always been my go-to pitch, but now having a slider, I’m able to use it differently.”
3. Changeup for the grounder to second base
At times last season, Hill became predictable. During an Aug. 23 game at Pittsburgh, Hill beat right-handed-hitting Alexander Canario with a slider for a strike. Hill repeated the slider, but Canario smoked a liner that hit Hill on his forearm and kept him off the mound for five days. At least one scout at the game predicted the pitch call from Goodman and Hill.
But with a more effective slider against left-handers, there were choices at 0-2. Under Leichman and the coaches, pitches were encouraged to either add pitches or change usage or grips, and Leichman is signaling pitches from the dugout -- partly to make the staff less predictable.
“The goal is to even out my statistics as much as possible, so they can’t guess what’s coming next,” Hill said. “I’ll be able to use whatever, whenever Alon calls it.”