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Not even a future National League MVP was immune to the mad scientist of baseball lineup makers.
It was unconventional when Rich Hill put the top home run hitter in the country atop the batting order. But if that means he is crazy, others are too. They include Dave Roberts, the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are back-to-back World Series champions with Shohei Ohtani batting first.
When Hill, now the University of Hawaii baseball coach, was at the University of San Diego, there were times when he would slot Kris Bryant at leadoff, five years before most American baseball fans had even heard of Ohtani.
“When I did that with Kris, I got a ton of backlash. ‘There goes Hill, the nutty professor, trying to outsmart the game again.’ But we got a lot of leadoff home runs,” Hill said. “Nobody wants to walk the first batter of the game. Plus, he stole bases and was great going first to third and first to home.”
Bryant was a two-time All-American and won college baseball’s biggest individual honors — the Dick Howser Trophy and Golden Spikes Award — in 2013. Two years later he was NL Rookie of the Year with Chicago, and the following year Bryant was the league MVP when the Cubs won the World Series.
Hill entered the 2026 season fifth among active college coaches with 1,208 wins in 38 years. His 141 victories in five winning seasons at UH have been accomplished with seemingly almost as many lineups.
The Rainbows (12-10) enter tonight’s scheduled game against Hawaii Pacific with 22 different lineups in 22 games this season. Only UH’s two most productive hitters, Elijah Ickes and Ben Zeigler-Namoa, have always been slotted somewhere in the first four slots (except for one or two games each in the five hole).
It’s not a gimmick. Hill takes pride in digging deep into every detail to determine which combination of players, and batting in which order, will most likely produce a win on a specific day. This is especially important since the ’Bows are built on pitching and defense even more than usual, and often rely on manufacturing runs — or one run — any way possible.
And the answers to the puzzle aren’t easily derived from basic statistics.
“There’s a lot of ways to win, but if we’re talking about run generation, then we gotta take into account who has a hard time against certain pitchers and certain pitches — fastball, slider, changeup. Often, it’s the changeup,” Hill said. “It’s an inexact science. I go a lot by the gut but use a ton of analytics, too. There’s a lot of things that don’t show up on the page. He might have hit four line drives for outs last time against the starting pitcher.”
At some point — as it has in past seasons — a lineup will eventually repeat itself, as more in-season data answers more questions quickly.
“No-brainer days late in the season, one to five minutes,” Hill said when asked how long the process takes.
But earlier on, it could take him “all night and next morning dissecting things” to develop the best lineup possible. Thoughts flow while he hand-writes drafts on yellow legal pads, on the kitchen table at home in Kailua and then as he finalizes the lineup at his office desk at Les Murakami Stadium.
“There’s a direct correlation between writing things down and thinking about them at a deeper level,” Hill said. “One of the goals is to never end the game with your best guy on deck. Who’s our best guy for this game? And we gotta have someone (who bats well) behind him, or he’s never gonna get a pitch. Protection is huge in a big league lineup, and at our level it’s pretty big, too.”
But a key difference between professional and college baseball is the reason he tinkers so much, Hill said.
“No, this is not like the major leagues,” he said. “You’re dealing with 18- to 22-year-olds who are very talented, but lack of consistency is the reason they’re in college. That means situations vary a lot, and change from game to game.”
One example: If a hitter is hot on Sunday will he still be for the next game if it isn’t until three days later?”
Also, with four months of just three or four games a week, every inning, every out, and every pitch takes on added importance.
“I’ll actually go with a gut feeling about a specific situation,” Hill said. “Runner on second, two outs, who do I want to see coming up? I know we scored 11 runs yesterday, but I don’t care, because it’s a new (opposing) starting pitcher, a new day.”
For some games against a right-handed pitcher the lineup will be loaded with lefties because of the natural advantage.
In others, it will alternate between left and right-handed batters all the way through.
“Some pitchers can get in a groove if you don’t mix (the lineup). And when you mix it they don’t have as many (lefty vs. lefty or righty vs. righty advantage) bullpen options early in the game,” he said. “I like to do that. In a perfect world that’s how you would see it all the time. It’s an effective tool.”
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It was unconventional when Rich Hill put the top home run hitter in the country atop the batting order. But if that means he is crazy, others are too. They include Dave Roberts, the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are back-to-back World Series champions with Shohei Ohtani batting first.
When Hill, now the University of Hawaii baseball coach, was at the University of San Diego, there were times when he would slot Kris Bryant at leadoff, five years before most American baseball fans had even heard of Ohtani.
“When I did that with Kris, I got a ton of backlash. ‘There goes Hill, the nutty professor, trying to outsmart the game again.’ But we got a lot of leadoff home runs,” Hill said. “Nobody wants to walk the first batter of the game. Plus, he stole bases and was great going first to third and first to home.”
Bryant was a two-time All-American and won college baseball’s biggest individual honors — the Dick Howser Trophy and Golden Spikes Award — in 2013. Two years later he was NL Rookie of the Year with Chicago, and the following year Bryant was the league MVP when the Cubs won the World Series.
Hill entered the 2026 season fifth among active college coaches with 1,208 wins in 38 years. His 141 victories in five winning seasons at UH have been accomplished with seemingly almost as many lineups.
The Rainbows (12-10) enter tonight’s scheduled game against Hawaii Pacific with 22 different lineups in 22 games this season. Only UH’s two most productive hitters, Elijah Ickes and Ben Zeigler-Namoa, have always been slotted somewhere in the first four slots (except for one or two games each in the five hole).
It’s not a gimmick. Hill takes pride in digging deep into every detail to determine which combination of players, and batting in which order, will most likely produce a win on a specific day. This is especially important since the ’Bows are built on pitching and defense even more than usual, and often rely on manufacturing runs — or one run — any way possible.
And the answers to the puzzle aren’t easily derived from basic statistics.
“There’s a lot of ways to win, but if we’re talking about run generation, then we gotta take into account who has a hard time against certain pitchers and certain pitches — fastball, slider, changeup. Often, it’s the changeup,” Hill said. “It’s an inexact science. I go a lot by the gut but use a ton of analytics, too. There’s a lot of things that don’t show up on the page. He might have hit four line drives for outs last time against the starting pitcher.”
At some point — as it has in past seasons — a lineup will eventually repeat itself, as more in-season data answers more questions quickly.
“No-brainer days late in the season, one to five minutes,” Hill said when asked how long the process takes.
But earlier on, it could take him “all night and next morning dissecting things” to develop the best lineup possible. Thoughts flow while he hand-writes drafts on yellow legal pads, on the kitchen table at home in Kailua and then as he finalizes the lineup at his office desk at Les Murakami Stadium.
“There’s a direct correlation between writing things down and thinking about them at a deeper level,” Hill said. “One of the goals is to never end the game with your best guy on deck. Who’s our best guy for this game? And we gotta have someone (who bats well) behind him, or he’s never gonna get a pitch. Protection is huge in a big league lineup, and at our level it’s pretty big, too.”
But a key difference between professional and college baseball is the reason he tinkers so much, Hill said.
“No, this is not like the major leagues,” he said. “You’re dealing with 18- to 22-year-olds who are very talented, but lack of consistency is the reason they’re in college. That means situations vary a lot, and change from game to game.”
One example: If a hitter is hot on Sunday will he still be for the next game if it isn’t until three days later?”
Also, with four months of just three or four games a week, every inning, every out, and every pitch takes on added importance.
“I’ll actually go with a gut feeling about a specific situation,” Hill said. “Runner on second, two outs, who do I want to see coming up? I know we scored 11 runs yesterday, but I don’t care, because it’s a new (opposing) starting pitcher, a new day.”
For some games against a right-handed pitcher the lineup will be loaded with lefties because of the natural advantage.
In others, it will alternate between left and right-handed batters all the way through.
“Some pitchers can get in a groove if you don’t mix (the lineup). And when you mix it they don’t have as many (lefty vs. lefty or righty vs. righty advantage) bullpen options early in the game,” he said. “I like to do that. In a perfect world that’s how you would see it all the time. It’s an effective tool.”
Continue reading...
