Dugout Chat: The transformation of former A&M pitcher Brigham Hill
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Brigham Hill doesn’t mince words when describing himself as a freshman. In his words, he was the worst player on the entire Texas A&M team.
He pitched in seven games to the tune of a 5.30 ERA, but he struggled just as much off the field as on it. He kept to himself, stuck close to his fellow freshmen and didn’t have much, if any, confidence when he stepped on the mound. Simply put, he was a far cry from the guy who would take over as the Friday night starter a year later and serve as the Aggies’ ace for one and a half years.
“Rough year,” Hill says. “If you would have met me as a freshman and gotten to know me, you would’ve said, ‘I don’t like this guy — he’s weird.’ I felt like I was just a standoff guy. I was quiet, and I hate to say it, but I was kind of soft.”
It was so bad that whenever Hill spotted head coach Rob Childress at the end of the hall, he would turn around and walk the other way to avoid having to talk to him. Hill knew it, and Childress knew it, so Childress told him to start coming up to his office once a week to talk.
“That was a long walk up those steps,” Hill says with a chuckle as he recalls his weekly treks up to Childress’ second-floor office.
But Hill started to come out of his shell. He got more comfortable talking to his head coach, and before long, he was going to his office every day just to visit.
“To me it comes down to what a guy sees in the mirror. It doesn’t matter what I think or what his parents think, the kid has to believe he can do it,” Childress says. “As a sophomore, Brigham was the same pitcher he was as a freshman. He was just scared of his own shadow as a freshman.”
With added confidence and closeness to Childress, who serves as the A&M pitching coach, Hill’s performance improved.
He had a dominant summer in Alaska with the Mat-Su Miners and carried that over to the fall and spring, where he worked his way into a prominent bullpen role for the Aggies.
Still, he talked to his parents before his sophomore year began about how much of a blessing it would be if he could just sneak into the back end of the weekend rotation by season’s end. He ended up wildly surpassing those hopes.
Hill looked like an entirely new pitcher as a sophomore in 2016. He was pitching with significantly more confidence as he suffocated opponents with strikes, his trademark changeup danced and he quickly became Childress’ most reliable weapon out of a bullpen stocked with several high-profile arms.
A&M assistant coach Justin Seely says the switch flipped for Hill in a game against Fresno State early in his sophomore campaign. Hill pitched scoreless innings in the eighth and ninth of a nail-biter the Aggies eventually won in 10 innings.
“He was just absolutely dominant,” Seely says. “I think at that moment he looked at himself the way we looked at him — like, ‘Hey, I think I’m pretty good.’ He just asserted himself as the best pitcher on the staff.”
Hill racked up the second-most innings pitched on the A&M roster as Childress employed him in every role imaginable. With the Aggies in the midst of a four-game losing streak and needing a spark, Childress inserted Hill into the Friday night role on April 8 against Georgia. The Nacogdoches native blanked the Bulldogs for 6.1 innings and did not relinquish his role for the remainder of his collegiate career.
“We had the luxury of using him as our X-factor out of the bullpen,” Childress says, “and he pitched so well that he forced his way into the rotation and never looked back.”
A crucial element to Hill’s success is his devastating changeup. While rehabbing from Tommy John surgery as a high school sophomore, he experimented with different changeup grips, trying to find an offspeed pitch that would minimize stress on his elbow. He found a grip he liked — a combination of the classic circle change and the rare Vulcan change — and perfected it.
All-American shortstop Braden Shewmake describes Hill’s changeup as “disgusting” and “gross,” and says he was happy he was in the infield when Hill was dominating last year instead of in the batter’s box.
“He can throw it three different ways,” Shewmake says. “He can cut it, he can throw it straight over the top where it looks like a 12-6 curveball without the spin, and he can pronate it to have it run away from a lefty and into a righty.
"It’s just unbelievably hard to hit. It’s a good feeling knowing he’s about to throw it to someone on the other team. When we know he’s about to throw it to someone else and they’ve got to try and hit it — good luck.”
Hill added a curveball to his arsenal for his junior year to give opposing hitters something extra to think about, but he still went to his changeup whenever he was in a jam or needed a strikeout. Childress is regarded by many as one of the best pitching coaches in America, and Hill is a perfect example of the 13-year coach’s incredible ability to develop pitchers.
“He was huge — he definitely turned my soft mindset into a killer mindset,” Hill says of Childress. “He’s big on attack, attack, attack. The mechanics will come, but if you don’t have the mindset, you’re not going to have success.”
Meanwhile, Hill made tremendous strides in the leadership department. He stayed in College Station to work out in the summer between his sophomore and junior year instead of playing summer ball, where he got the opportunity to get to know the incoming recruiting class. Remembering how he felt as a freshman, Hill made it a point to make sure the freshmen felt included in everything, and it didn’t take long for him to become extremely close friends with Shewmake and Logan Foster.
“He wanted to make it a priority to have everybody involved with everybody, so when he came to me and Foster, we felt nothing but love from him,” Shewmake says. “He’s a great teammate, great guy — if we needed anything at any time, he’d be there in a heartbeat. He did a really good job of taking us under his wing and making us feel welcome.”
Now in the Nationals’ minor league system, the fifth-round draft pick reached Class A Hagerstown, during his first professional season, where he played with fellow A&M products Nick Banks and Kyle Simonds. Hill went 0-2 with a 4.98 ERA over 43.1 innings between short-season and Single-A, and Childress thinks he has what it takes to make it to the big leagues sooner rather than later.
“I think he has a chance to pitch for a long time because he throws strikes. He’s going to advance and give himself a shot real quick to get a call,” Childress says. “He can pitch, he throws strikes and he can serve in any role — he showed that here. He’s got a pitch that can punch you out so he can be a short reliever with the changeup, but he can also be a long reliever or a starter.
"I think he’s a very valuable piece to any team. He’s going to get to Double-A real quick and once you get there, you’re one injury away from getting a real shot.”
This offseason Hill is doing as much hunting and fishing as possible while working on his family ranch and giving a few pitching lessons on the side. No matter what happens moving forward with his pitching career, he left an indelible mark on the Texas A&M program and was a part of three deep postseason runs for the Aggies.
“He led us into the weekends for a year and a half,” Childress says. “He made an impact here — he made a difference. He left this place better than he found it.”
