I got too much to lose No one can fill my shoes

Think I'll leave the blues

Hello and welcome to episode 856 of Effectively Wild The Daily Podcast

from Baseball Perspectives presented by the play index at baseballreference.com

and our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh, 538, joined by Sam Miller

of Baseball Perspectives. Hello, we're starting a little late because you had a Reddit ask me anything

and I realized that that's every day for me. I get to ask you anything whenever I want.

It's really a privileged life I lead. How did that go?

It was good. Their questions are better than yours.

Well, fortunately we're doing a listen or email show. So we're taking other people's questions.

It's really just a continuation of your ask me anything.

We should probably talk about Rich Hill for a second.

Just take your temperature on a little Rich who was a popular topic last year

and his earning potential seemed to fluctuate by many millions of dollars from one start to the next

or at least it did in our minds. And the A's ended up signing him for what, $6 million

which I think you were surprised that it wasn't more right or it seemed like someone who was so good at the end of last year

could command more from someone and he didn't and perhaps we are now seeing why.

So I want to ask since we did our little check in and since it seemed like a single Rich Hill start late last year

could derail him from suddenly ace potential to not even worse at the league minimum.

He has now gone through a spring training in which he struggled.

He made four starts, 12 innings, 12 hits, 15 runs, 15 walks and nine strikeouts.

So more than a walk and more than a run per inning.

...