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Hill Can't Impress Harshest Critic
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"I'm very harsh on myself," Hill said. "That's the way I've been. It's the way I kind of like it. I prefer if I'm going well, still come tell me what I did wrong."
For anyone not named Hill, that was a difficult task Thursday. Hill's sinker has such movement that when he can place it on both sides of the plate he rarely has to throw his other pitches. In the third, he threw one to Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins, hitting left-handed, with a 1-2 count. The ball started in toward Rollins's body, but then darted hard back over the plate. Rollins couldn't lift his bat, and he was called out on strikes.
"For a lefty, you have pitches coming at your front hip," catcher Brian Schneider said, "and it's hard to tell yourself, 'Oh, swing.' "
The truest assessment of such a pitch, and how it factored into such a performance, comes from the opposition. The Phillies were wowed.
"He's probably got one of the best sinkers in the league, between him and Brandon Webb," said Rowand, introducing the reigning National League Cy Young award winner into the conversation. "He throws it hard. He hits his spots with it. He'll backdoor it on righties. He gave us fits today."
And then, when he walked Pat Burrell to lead off the eighth, he gave himself fits. The Nationals had seized a 4-0 lead on Dmitri Young's solo homer in the fourth and a three-run sixth that ended Hamels's day. Rowand's homer, on a sinker that Hill called a "bad pitch," got the Phillies a run.
So after the walk to Victorino in the ninth, Acta pulled Hill. On came Cordero, who has had fits of his own. But as he worked through those problems, Cordero realized he was relying too much on his slider, not enough on his fastball.
"That's what got me to where I am today," Cordero said.
So he went back to it Thursday. Chase Utley hit a fly ball to the warning track in center, but Church caught it. Ryan Howard followed with a double down the line, and Burrell hit a sacrifice fly. But when he needed to, Cordero struck out Wes Helms with a fastball to end it, preserving a brilliant win for Hill -- though he probably wouldn't assess it that way himself.
