{"id":211713,"date":"2025-07-29T20:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T20:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/211713\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T20:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T20:50:10","slug":"royals-designate-rich-hill-for-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/211713\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals Designate Rich Hill For Assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Royals announced that veteran southpaw Rich Hill<\/a> has been designated for assignment.\u00a0 The move opens up roster space for right-hander Thomas Hatch<\/a>, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A Omaha.<\/p>\n

After being released by the Red Sox last September, the 45-year-old Hill didn\u2019t sign a contract until inking a minors deal with Kansas City in May.\u00a0 Hill pitched 11 outings of ramp-up work in the minor leagues before his contract was selected to the Royals\u2019 roster a week ago today, and he\u2019ll head into DFA limbo with a 5.00 ERA to show for his two starts in a K.C. uniform.<\/p>\n

Hill allowed just one earned run over five innings against the Cubs but received no run support in a 6-0 loss on July 22, and the Braves touched him up for four earned runs (on six walks, three hits, and two homers allowed) in as many innings in a start yesterday.\u00a0 That was apparently enough for the Royals to designate Hill, and he may now be headed for yet another chapter in a career that has now stretched across 21 Major League seasons.<\/p>\n

If Hill clears waivers, he obviously has more than enough service time to reject an outright assignment to Triple-A, so the ball is in his court as to his next step.\u00a0 Hill may opt to just remain with the Royals, and while the club could release him, the Royals may want some rotation depth available in Omaha with so many other starters on the injured list.<\/p>\n

A waiver claim isn\u2019t out of the question, given how many teams need starting depth right now, and could still need more arms depending on how the trade deadline shakes out.\u00a0 Pitching-needy clubs could wait until after the 5pm CT deadline on Thursday to put in a claim on Hill, should they have a sudden hole to fill in a rotation following a trade or two.<\/p>\n

Should Hill head to free agency once more, it remains to be seen if he\u2019ll be able to find another minor league contract elsewhere, given how long it took him to land with the Royals.\u00a0 Yet another reunion with the Red Sox can\u2019t be ruled out, or Hill could try to find a brand-new organization in an attempt to secure a unique place in the record books.\u00a0 Hill and Edwin Jackson share the record for most career teams (14), so suiting up with a 15th different club at the big league level would make Hill the most well-traveled player in MLB history.\u00a0 Retirement is naturally another option, if Hill decides to finally hang up his cleats after 24 total years in pro ball.<\/p>\n

To put it in perspective, Hatch was only seven years old when Hill was drafted by the Cubs in 2002.\u00a0 Hatch signed a minor league deal with K.C. during the offseason and has yet to see any big league action \u2014 his contract was previously selected on June 5 but just for the first game of a doubleheader, and Hatch was DFA\u2019ed before the nightcap.<\/p>\n

Assuming that this stint with the Royals leads to an in-game appearance, it will mark Hatch\u2019s first time on a Major League mound since the 2023 season.\u00a0 The 30-year-old Hatch posted a 4.96 ERA over 69 MLB innings with the Blue Jays and Pirates from 2020-23 before he spent the 2024 campaign in Japan with the Hiroshima Carp.\u00a0 Hatch has a 4.22 ERA, 20.1% strikeout rate, and 7.2% walk rate across 91 2\/3 innings and 18 Triple-A starts this year, and he\u2019ll be the next pitcher to try and fill a hole in Kansas City\u2019s injury-riddled rotation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royals announced that veteran southpaw Rich Hill has been designated for assignment.\u00a0 The move opens up roster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,10334,20316],"class_list":{"0":"post-211713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-rich-hill","11":"tag-thomas-hatch"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114938499815167220","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}