Rich Hill Thrilled To Join Red Sox On AL Postseason Chase

Rich Hill didn’t call it quits this season, and he joins a Boston Red Sox team also motivated to prove doubters wrong.

The southpaw pitcher Thursday became the first player to appear in at least one MLB game in the past 20 seasons when he came on in relief for Kutter Crawford. Hill tossed 1 1/3 perfect innings and recorded two strikeouts.

Hill was emotional when he left the mound for the night, and he’ll be a relied-upon veteran as Boston fell to 3 1/2 games for the final American League wild-card spot after Thursday’s loss to the Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park.

“One of the things we’ve seen here in the past couple of days is a little bit of a late reporting time, which has been a healthy kind of outlet for the players to realize, hey, look we’re in the middle of this wild-card race,” Hill told Tom Caron and Alex Speier on NESN’s “310 To Left” podcast. “And the division, the other side of this, we have 30 games left, I don’t discount the division.

“I’ve seen it happen. I was on a Red Sox team that was in a good spot Sept. 1 as the Yankees and the Orioles are, things didn’t go so well in September. I think we’re in that spot as well to be able to — obviously, if we were going to take it today and say, ‘Would you take that wild-card spot?’ Obviously, we would say yes. I think looking at the way these guys go about their business, the eagerness that they want to go out and perform at that level and perform in Boston, it’s exciting to see.”

New York and Baltimore will battle it out for the AL East crown in the final month of the season. The Red Sox have one more series against each side next month, and they will be massively valuable matchups for all involved.

You listen to more of Caron and Speier’s conversation with Hill on “310 To Left” in the YouTube and Spotify embeds above.