When the A’s signed Rich Hill to a one-year, $6 million contract in 2015, they were picking up a guy who, more than a decade into his injury-plagued career, had just opted out of a minor league contract with the Nationals and thrown a couple starts (and peed in a few buckets) for the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League.
He went on to have one of the better stints of his career in early 2016 before getting traded to the Dodgers. A year later, he still managed to shine — this time as a National League Champion in the World Series — despite being part of a rotation that featured both Clayton Kershaw and Yu Darvish.