Jordan Hicks should probably pitch better than this
Just one man's biased opinion
If you go by Fangraphs, Jordan Hicks hasn’t been terrible this year. Sure, the ERA is unsightly, and it seems like it’s only getting worse, but his xERA isn’t abysmal, and his FIP and xFIP are both basically fine. It’s just that he has a high BABIP and a low strand rate, and that’s the sort of thing that evens out over the course of a long season. His fastball velocity is still excellent, and he’s getting a ton of ground balls, and his average exit velocity is fine, and it should be working.
It really, honestly should be working.
So let’s talk about how it’s not working.
There are not a lot of things in baseball more frustrating than watching a ground ball pitcher who gets ground balls that find holes. He’s doing his job! This is very specifically the exact thing that he is supposed to do, and it’s not working out.
This leads to doubt and recrimination. Clearly, the reason it’s not working is that he’s not good at being a starter. Clearly, the organization has given him too much rope, and are now shocked that he’s using it for something unpleasant. Clearly, he needs to be moved to the bullpen to get some young blood in the rotation. Clearly, clearly, clearly.
But it just doesn’t make sense. Basically every stat that Hicks has control over this year is an improvement on what he did last year. More strikeouts, fewer walks, giving up fewer home runs, more ground balls. Those are the exact things you want to see, and you’re seeing them. The thing that has been frustrating Giants fans about Hicks is that a ton of ground balls go through for hits — far more than would be sustainable long-term— and then when he gets pulled from the game, whichever reliever comes in cashes in more of his runners than you would expect. It’s pretty unfair to Hicks that we’re blaming him for this; he’s the biggest victim of all of it, not the perpetrator.
And yet, we all know that sometimes, those advanced stats miss something. Sometimes the eye test can tell you things that you can’t get from a Fangraphs page. Most notably, it happened to Tim Lincecum in 2012. His numbers plummeted from where they’d been the previous few years, but Fangraphs wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t good anymore. His ERA ended up being a full point higher than his FIP, and we all wanted to believe that the turnaround was imminent, any day now.
It wasn’t. He was better in 2013 than he had been in 2012, but the age of Dominant Timmy was gone forever. Lincecum’s ERA in 2012 was a full point higher than his FIP, still a pretty shocking result for a full season. Even with a good strikeout rate, he never became 2009 Timmy again. What looked like fluky home run numbers never came down. Despite all the evidence that said he should not be bad, he was instead bad.
Just to be clear: I am not comparing Jordan Hicks to Tim Lincecum. But the example is instructive that you can’t just blindly assume regression is destiny. Hicks should get better over the rest of the year. But if he doesn’t, then the team has a decision to make.
Should they take Hicks out of the rotation, even though that’s the thing was signed to do? Is anyone actually ready to step in? And isn’t violating the team’s word to Hicks about keeping him in the rotation the exact kind of thing that Buster Posey wanted to stop as President of Baseball Operations? Didn’t he want players to know that they were always going to get a real chance? And of the options to replace Hicks in the rotation — Hayden Birdsong, Kyle Harrison, and Carson Whisenhunt — are any of them likely to be better going forward than Hicks?
I mean, they all could be better, but that’s not that plausible. And besides, one of them also might have to take Landon Roupp’s spot soon, so that narrows the pool down even further. Insisting on replacing Hicks now, under those circumstances is very silly. It’s the classic move of assuming Guy A is better than Guy B solely because you’ve never seen Guy A play and you have seen Guy B lose.
But then you’re stuck with Jordan Hicks, Possible Bad Starter. There isn’t much advice you can give other than “Watch and wait.” He’ll live up to his stats or he won’t. He should be able to go out next time around and pitch like a major leaguer, but if not, well, we’ve seen that movie before. It’s a risk to leave him in the rotation, but it’s also a risk to take him out. There are no slam-dunk moves here, no matter how gratifying it would be to never see Hicks give up 5 runs again.
Great post. Giants fans have been looking for a scapegoat all year to justify getting Hayden Birdsong into the rotation. First, it was Justin Verlander, before they finally realized, hey, wait, maybe he IS pitching well, just not getting the breaks or run support. Then it was Robby Ray, who kept getting shredded early in games, couldn’t get past the fourth inning, before realizing, oh, well, he did have to pitch in thunderstorms and freezing conditions. And then, the realization that, dang, the Giants have won all his starts, and, geez, look at how he dominates hitters.
Hicks has also had to pitch in bad weather, has not had run support, is getting tough breaks on ground balls getting through, and, yes, the occasional bad pitch selection (i put some of that on Patrick Bailey, who just doesn’t read hitters well, but that shouldn’t be a surprise: he’s one of the worst hitters in MLB).
Melvin has obviously been talking off the record with beat writers about Hicks, and they’re taking their cues, jumping on the conventional wisdom bandwagon to push for his ouster. Did anyone notice the two home runs Birdsong gave up, the first of which helped explode Hicks’s numbers more?
Yes, we are a results oriented people, but we seem to never heed the warning about asking what we wish for.
I’d be curious to know the substance of the agreement the Giants have with Hicks re: him being a starter. Was it an unconditional, “sure, come join our starting rotation”? Or was there some wiggle room for the Giants, like “sure, if it works out you can be a starter; but if the time comes that we don’t think it’s working out, we’ll move you back to the ‘pen.” That’s kind of a long winded way of asking, “how much rope does Hicks have as a starter?”