+1. Let him be next year’s Ludwick.

Shawn Hill is very much like prior talent wise, great command, location, repertoire of pitches, granted his DL stints are not by freak accidents but actual damage to his pitching arm/shoulder and the subsequent surgeries.

However, unlike prior he has never stayed healthy for 1 full season. And i fear Hill being like Clement was last year if the cards sign him (granted it would be to a minor league contract so the money isn’t too big a deal, even though the Nats owed him less than a million if he made the roster). If they realize in camp he needs more time (which he was already slated for with the Nats this spring) and isn’t effective down the road he won’t amount to a hill of beans later in the season.

And the Nats have kept Hill as a starter because his arm needs that recovery time that comes with a starting pitcher, being in the bullpen limits his ability to recover and pitch a side session between starts and rest another day. Hill wouldn’t function well in the pen with his arm tightening up the day after almost every start. (both his starts this year were only 1.0 IP and his arm tightened up the next day, to a point where the Nats held him out of any bullpen/throwing sessions for a few extra days)

One difference between Hill and Patterson is Hill is much more positive with his mindset on wanting to pitch, recover and get back into the game than patterson ever was. Any little discomfort, tightness, what have you and Hill always seemed to shut down but will always do his best to get back, so the gun-ho ability is there, it’s just a factor if the organization believes he’d contribute more effectively than our other AAA starters if someone goes down in the big league rotation (i do believe if healthy he’s a better alternative than Boggs or Walters for a call-up)

I would say that Hill is a low-risk-high-reward starting pitcher that the cards should sign to a minor league deal for insurance, but bet alot of other starter-depleted teams may sign him to a minor league deal also (even the nats)

Throw him a bone…minor league deal. Make the contract say something along the lines of: If he makes 15 starts in the bigs or pitches in 40 games at the ML level then he gets bumped up to a $1 million salary for this season.

retired a few months ago. The Nats have a decent rotation this year if Jordan Zimmermann and Sharion Martis make the rotation. Zimmermann was dynamite this spring with his first runs against him coming from the cards last week, which was after 12-15 innings of shutout pitching. And Sharion has already gotten his feet wet in the majors so i can see him being a reliable #5 starter.

They’re not always the best at dumping players before they become worthless (Dimitri Young, and i’m just sadly waiting for nick johnson to go down with another injury sometime this season)