White Sox sign veteran reliever to one-year deal

Hill posted decent results from 2020-22, combining for a 3.72 ERA over 125 2/3 innings. Things went off the rails last season. He was tagged for a personal-high 5.48 earned runs per nine over 48 appearances. That’s in part a reflection of a career-high .349 average on balls in play, but Hill’s strikeout rate has plummeted over the past two seasons.

After punching out nearly a quarter of opponents early in his career, he has fanned just under 13% of batters faced in each of the last two years. That combined with a spike in hard contact last season for the worst results of his career. San Diego let him go in lieu of a $2.4M salary projection for his final year of arbitration.

It didn’t turn out too much worse for Hill in the end, as his salary with the White Sox is only $600K below the arbitration forecast. With over five years of major league service, the 33-year-old (34 in February) can no longer be sent to the minors. He’ll open the year in Pedro Grifol’s bullpen.

Hill offers a different look from hard-throwing Garrett Crochet, who projects as Chicago’s top southpaw. Despite fastball velocity that sits around 90 mph, Hill has kept left-handed batters to a modest .228/.313/.328 slash over the past four seasons. Lefty batters have put the ball on the ground on nearly 65% of their batted balls over that stretch. Righties have predictably given him far more trouble, running a .298/.361/.475 batting line during Hill’s time in San Diego.

Chicago already has a full 40-man roster. Once they finalize their contract with Hill and a $4M deal for catcher Martín Maldonado, they’ll need to create a pair of vacancies. The low-cost signings bring their 2024 payroll projection to roughly $149M, as calculated by Roster Resource.