Hill as closer

Since the point has been brought up, I thought I'd take a quick peek
at how the oft-injured Shawn Hill might fare as a one inning only guy.

BA/OBP/SLG/OPS.

.236 .297 .279 .575

How's that grab ya? Those are Hill's numbers in the 1st inning.
That's over 155 PA's and 140ABs.

Here are the same figures for inning number 2 168pa/149ab:

.315  .377  .483  .860

Yeech. Horganesque to be charitable. I'd go on but the numbers
really don't improve.

No real platoon split although as you might expect LHB's
pound him a little harder than RHBs.

In 37 games (all as a starter BTW) here's his numbers against the
first batter he's faced.

.176  .243  .206  .449

Impressed yet? 
Now, I'm sure that most pitchers have much better numbers
at the start of games, in their first inning of work and
even against the 1st batter.  So take these with a grain of salt.
But at the very least, there is no barrier in the numbers to Shawn Hill
making a successful transition to the bullpen.

So how about these 155 PA's and 130Ab's in "high leverage situations"?

.254  .329  .362  .690

Doesn't blow me away but it isn't like he's a choke artist.

So what have we learned?  Hill has never been used in relief.
He does pretty well against both the first batter he faces and in
his first inning of work.  Assuming he could translate those skills
to the bullpen, it appears he would be effective.  As long as his
arm holds out anyway.