Okay, let's break this down a bit.
Hill has been very good against the Braves in a very small sample size (2 starts) since the beginning of 2017. He's pitched 13.1 innings, given up only 2 earned runs, 3 BB, and struck out 16 Braves. We did not hit any homeruns off of him in either of these starts. We batted .180/.241/.220 against him with a terrible .211 wOBA.
Other stats of note against us: 1.35 ERA, 1.66 FIP, 2.82 xFIP
10.8 K/9
2 BB/9
29.6% K%
5.6% BB%
BABIP of .265 suggests maybe a little bit of luck, but let's face it... the sample size is just really small.
Only two of our regulars have more than one career hit off of Hill - Camargo sees him well and has gone 3/6 with 2 doubles and Markakis has gone 2/7
The only other player with an extra base hit off of him is? well obviously its Ryan Flaherty who is 1/2 with a triple...
Freeman is 1/6, Acuna is 0/3 with 2 K's, Albies is 0/3 with 2 K's, Inciarte is 0-7
Some highlights from the traditional Rich Hll splits (2016-2018):
-Neutral home/away splits
-Rarely gets past the 6th inning, but if he does, he's been pretty good in those innings.
-Sometimes struggles a bit in the first inning (.312 wOBA)... dominates inning 2 and innings 3-5 are all roughly the same, sometimes good, sometimes struggles (wOBA ~.295)
-He's better at night than in the day (.270 wOBA against at night, .289 wOBA in the day)
-He's actually equally effective the 3rd time through the batting order (.258 wOBA against) as the 1st (.262 wOBA)
-But maybe we can exploit his struggles at times during the second time through the order (.298 wOBA against)
-Has had reverse splits (.308 wOBA/4.91 xFIP vs. lefties and .265 wOBA/3.31 xFIP vs. righties)
-Seems to struggle the most situationaly with 1 out and runners on (.330 wOBA) and 1 out with runners in scoring position (.334 wOBA)
-We have to be selective and work the count with this guy... as you would expect, he's most effective when he gets ahead 0-1 or 0-2... but he gets lit up when he falls behind and struggles when the count is full
-Need to find a balance of aggressiveness and patience... he struggles when you make him work, getting him behind, but he also struggles when players attack him on the first pitch (.321/.333/.528 when the count is 0-0 in 2018)
Post season last year, he made 4 starts - was 0-0, 2.55 ERA in 17.2 innings... 24 K's 8 BB's (4.08 BB/9 and 12.23 K/9). He did give up 3 homeruns with a 4.01 FIP... was probably just a tiny bit better in the 2016 post season, but he's shown to have some control issues in the post season.
Not many holes to his game, he's just not very durable. Its not going to be easy today but there are a few strategy opportunities and maybe his daytime splits are something real. Will look at Folty next post (I don't do this much so be kind)