Jordan Hicks has caught the eye of every serious baseball observer. With a 105+ MPH sinker lighting up radar guns (a feat only achieved by flamethrower Aroldis Chapman) and a 2.70 ERA, he deservers every bit of attention.
But something that got less attention than Hicks’ record setting heat, was the pitch’s distance from the plate.
Jordan Hicks, 105mph Fastball movement. 😂😳🔥 pic.twitter.com/jdu1hbO7N2
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 20, 2018
It doesn’t do much good if you can throw a pitch faster than a hitter reacts if that pitch makes it all the way to the backstop.
Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs do rate Hicks as a positive value player for the Cardinals with 0.7 and 0.4 WAR respectively. But Baseball Prospectus rates him at a whopping -0.9 WAR, a level that few relievers reach, especially in July. In fact Baseball Prospectus rates Hicks as the 39th worst pitcher in all of baseball, with only 46.2 innings pitched!
What’s going on here? Why do 2 sabermetric sites rate Hicks’ well, while another rates him as awful? The FanGraphs calculation is FIP-based (he Baseball-Reference calculation works similarly), and Hicks has only given up 1 HR all season leading to a respectable 3.43 FIP. With a 61.2 GB%, and a low HR/FB rate throughout his minor league career, Hicks seems unlikely to give up many long balls.
Baseball Prospectus however utilizes DRA, a more complex methodology that assigns values to each baseball event, and relies more heavily on the interaction of contextual variables such as leverage, home-field advantage, and defense. Now Baseball-Reference does take defense into account, but it does not take into account that teams play better defense on their home turf, a key factor that Baseball Prospectus cleverly leverages with linear mixed models.
The big eyesore on Hicks’ metrics is his 12.0 BB% rate, 18th worst amongst pitchers with 40+ innings pitched. Hicks’ peripherals also look concrening. A BABIP of 0.213 is unsustainable, especially when weaker minor league talent achieved levels of 0.269-0.400 on Hicks. Statcast, which leverages quality of contact, confirms these suspicions. Amongst pitchers with at least 150 PA, Hicks owns the 28th, 12th, and 2nd worst xSLG-SLG, xwOBA-wOBA, and xBA-BA differentials respectively.
What drives this discrepancy? Hicks’ extreme groundball rate leads to very few popups (the easiest in-play out), with only 2 allowed all season. Only Tyler Glasnow has a lower popup rate amongst pitchers with 40+ inning pitchers. Much hubbub exists around the groundball revolution in baseball. Grounders are after all very unlikely to turn into home runs. But grounders are also more likely to turn into hits. Matthew Murphy has an excellent analysis demonstrating that extreme groundball pitchers have more trouble with managing flyball contact, especially with low infield fly rates like Hicks. And the legendary Bill James writes about the injury-proneness of players of extreme groundball pitchers:
What I have never understood about ground ball pitchers, and do not understand now, is why they always get hurt.  Show me an extreme ground ball pitcher, a guy with a terrific ground ball rate, and I’ll show you a guy who is going to be good for two years and then get hurt.  I’m not saying this about Chien-Ming Wang and Brandon Webb; I was saying this before Chien-Ming Wang and Brandon Webb.   They’re just the latest examples.   Mark Fidrych.   Randy Jones.   Ross Grimsley.   Mike Caldwell.   Rick Langford. Lary Sorensen.   Clyde Wright.   Fritz Peterson.  Dave Roberts.    They’re great for two years, and then they blow up.    Always.
Always?   Well. ..Tommy John.   If your defense argument here is a guy who is famous for having a surgery named after him, I’m not sure I’m convinced.    Maddux and Glavine, sure, but neither Maddux was not an extreme ground ball pitcher until the last two or three years of his career.   I don’t know whether Glavine was, or not.
Derek Lowe?   Derek Lowe was sensational in 2002; the rest of his career he’s a .500 pitcher.  You take Derek Lowe; I’ll take Verlander.
Now many smart baseball observers have noted that Hicks’ has improved in the past few months. Hicks added more spin to his slider nicely complementing the extreme fastball velocity, leading to more strikeouts compensating for the high walk rate.
But diving further into Hicks’ splits uncovers some curious trends. Hicks walk rate is greater than or equal to his strikeout rate against lefties, at home, and in high-leverage situations. In particular, Hicks exhibits 28.7/9.6 K/BB% rates against righties, but 14.3/14.3% K/BB% against lefties. The BABIP sits at an unheard of 0.145 with righties, yet 0.269 with lefties, rates that become more extreme in the months that Hicks has allegedly improved. March-May, Hicks also had a 38:43 High:Low leverage appearance ratio (47% High Leverage). In June-July, only a 15:33 ratio (31% High Leverage). Given that Hicks has a -1.9 K-BB% in High Leverage (that’s right, more Walks than Strikeouts), but 17.1 K-BB% in Low Leverage appearances, Hicks is bound to regress.
Jordan Hicks is still only 21, and has plenty of time to improve. But reports of a lax work ethic, and a high velocity sinker indicate he will flame out in the big leagues, and get hurt in the process.
+1 for the sharp observation. It will be quite interesting to see whether his career follows the injury-ridden precedents.