DETROIT - Jaden Hill’s biggest edge may not be the 97 mph fastball or the two weapons that can finish hitters on either side of the plate. It may be the way he refuses to let the moment show on his face.
That trait, Hill said, was built long before he reached the Rockies bullpen. It goes back to pee-wee football, when he was 10 and his father, Kenneth Hill, a former basketball player at the University of the Ozarks, would break down his games on a projector in Jaden’s room.
“I was young, in pee-wee football,” Hill said. “I would play, and the next morning - good, bad or ugly - we would sit down in my room and put a projector on the screen, watch film.
“He would let me know, like, ‘You gave up on this play.’ It wasn’t necessarily X’s and O’s. It was more him teaching me how to become a better athlete, a better player, a better person - how to manage myself when I was out there.
“There are weaknesses in people. You find weaknesses looking at their body language, how they respond, and that’s how you attack that person.
That transferred over to me and let me know other people are watching me, too. If I’m showing weakness, they know they can get to me.
You can’t allow anyone to feel that way.”
That mindset has become part of Hill’s job now. On Tuesday at Yankee Stadium, he walked Spencer Jones to open the seventh and then issued another walk to George Lombard Jr. with one out.
Trouble was there. Hill never looked like it.
He escaped the inning without allowing a run and kept Colorado within reach in a 5-3 loss.
Hill, 26, came to the Rockies as a second-round pick in 2021 out of LSU. His fastball can reach 97 mph, and he pairs it with a changeup and slider that give him a putaway pitch on both sides of the plate. That mix gives him the kind of arsenal that could fit in the ninth inning someday.
Right now, though, the bigger story is how he’s handling the grind.
He opened the season with a 2.61 ERA in 23 appearances through May, then hit a rough stretch: in his next nine games, he went 0-1 with a 13.50 ERA in just six innings before landing on the injured list with right shoulder tendinitis, the first time a Major League injury had sidelined him.
When he returned, he threw three clean outings. Then came another test.
On Aug. 29 in Atlanta, with the Rockies leading 1-0, Hill came in with two outs in the seventh and walked Austin Riley before striking out Lane Thomas to end the inning. He went back out for the eighth, the first time since the injury that he had finished one inning and started the next. He retired the first two hitters, then allowed three straight hits, capped by a Michael Harris II two-run double that lifted the Braves to a 2-1 win.
After that game, Hill sat in his locker for a long stretch. He made sure nobody else saw the moment.
“That was tough for me,” Hill said. “I had gone such a long time without experiencing the ups and downs.
The entire bullpen was pitching well. The team was tired - no off-days, travel.
I felt that was on my shoulders and it felt personal, so it took me a little to get over that. I went to the hotel to clear my head, eat some food … just me in a dark room.
“Once I was able to shake it off, I was OK.”
He had to reset again in his next outing, this time against the Orioles at home. Jackson Holliday hit a seventh-inning homer that erased a one-run lead, but Hill stayed steady and finished the inning. TJ Rumfield’s two-run homer in the bottom half put Colorado back in front for good.
That stretch - two blown saves, with the second turning into a win - became another lesson in what big-league relief work demands.
“Every big league reliever is going to be pitching back-to-back, and pitching fatigued in a really big moment,” Rockies bullpen coach Matt Buschmann said. “In reality, it’s counterintuitive: When the stakes are high, it’s like, ‘How can I stay calm?
I don’t want to sell out to get my pitch where it needs to go. I don’t need to throw harder to get it to go where it needs to go.’
That’s a learning thing for him.”
For the Rockies, the future structure of the bullpen may matter too. Jordan Romano is the current closer, is set to become a free agent at season’s end and has said he would like to return. That could leave Hill in position to settle in as a setup man.
Colorado has also shown a willingness to build its relief corps by dealing for power arms. Nick Frasso came from the Dodgers for Seth Halvorsen, Mark Manfredi arrived from the Brewers for Antonio Senzatela, and second baseman Connor Norby came from the Marlins for Victor Vodnik.
Hill said those decisions are out of his hands. What he can control is how he responds when the pressure rises.
Romano likes what he sees.
“When you’re a young pitcher and you’re put in a tight spot, and it does not go well, that’s not the issue,” Romano said, adding that he still has sleepless nights and flashbacks the next morning before shaking off a blown save. “How do you bounce back from that? He’s bouncing back great.”
Hill says that calm is no accident.
“It’s something that’s been instilled in me since I was a little kid,” he said. “It’s a long season and a tough game, and there are going to be obstacles. But it’s up to us to push through it.”
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