Stick With Hicks: Examining Aaron Hicks’ Future Stock

As a random side note, Paul Sporer reached out to me when he saw that I was going to write about Aaron Hicks to make sure we weren’t going to step on each others’ toes. In the spirit of preserving his and my work, here’s a link to what he wrote — which I have not/will not read until after this is published.

As a Twins reporter and low-end minor league junkie, I’ve been a Hicks advocate since his 2012 season at Double-A New Britain. Hicks hit .286/.384/.460, which to me is a triple-slash with some inherent aesthetic beauty. Hicks had 116 strikeouts that year — high, to be sure — but backed it with 79 walks. I had read reports on him that said he was ultra-disciplined to the point of almost being too passive at the plate. Could that even be possible?

I was about to find out.

My first regular year on the Twins beat was 2013, and Hicks got off to a dreadful start. He went 8-for-April (.113/.229/.127), testing the limits of just how much you could walk when you’re up there with a swimming noodle at the plate, and before long the Twins moved him down in the order before ultimately pushing him aside for the likes of Clete Thomas and Alex Presley. In fact, Thomas — dubbed #Cletesanity by local media — got more plate appearances than Hicks. Uncle! Anyway, after a sizzling 2013 spring training, Hicks had fizzled. In fact, it was not entirely unlike what Byron Buxton did this year with the Twins.

The 2014 season wasn’t too terribly different for Hicks. He started better, but still had just a .597 OPS after the first month. He toyed with hitting just right-handed — a notion I hated — before ultimately returning to his switch-hitting ways, and let’s be honest: hitting .250/.348/.300 in September actually qualified as a vast improvement — somehow.

The Twins have had other toolsy outfielders take time to develop. Torii Hunter didn’t become a really nice player for about 800 plate appearances. Carlos Gomez took even more time, and in fact even though people might believe otherwise, he faltered badly with the Brewers at first before they cut his shackles loose. Everyone in Minnesota — outside of yours truly — had basically moved on from Hicks. Not me. I was the purveyor of the #StickWithHicks hashtag.

Hicks didn’t make the Twins out of spring training in 2015. In fact, the Twins trotted Jordan Schafer out in center for the first month or so, before cutting him in mid-June. Hicks didn’t appear with the Twins until May 12, and by that point had put together a pretty nice season down at Triple-A Rochester (.336/.415/.561). In fact, it wasn’t entirely unlike what Jackie Bradley Jr. had done for the Red Sox. I consider those two players to have a ton in common, including skipping Triple-A altogether at first, struggling mightily for two big league seasons, and essentially figuring it out in 2015.

And if that spoils where I think Hicks is headed, I think that’s OK. I was disappointed to see the Twins move on from Hicks at first. Not because I really like Hicks as a fan or a person or anything — I try to dissociate from all of that as a media type — but because I think his stock still has some helium. That stats still show that he struggles a bit with right-handed pitching — or perhaps more likely, as a left-handed hitter — but I saw some things over the course of the season that I think bear noticing.

I wrote about Hicks’ new swing over at Twins Daily here, and while I’m not as convinced that it made him into an entirely different hitter, it sure did seem like it allowed him to make more consistent, hard contact. Watching him in his first two years, it was painfully obvious that Hicks’ timing was off to the point where when he made contact, it was feather soft. Visibly, those tools flashed louder this year, even when he was making outs.

A lot of times I read that BABIP was a big culprit for Hicks’ rough first two years, but when you’re hitting the ball as softly as he was, I think the BABIP window gets compressed quite a bit.

Now, our stats say that 2013 was his best year for hard-hit rate (31 percent), and while I’m not sure what to make of the dissonance between that and my eyes, I take some conciliation from the fact that his groundball rate and fly ball rate have gone down at the expense of his line-drive rate.

I still don’t know if Hicks will figure out how to hit as a left-handed hitter, but with his tools flashing louder this year — that includes defense, his otherworldly arm strength and his speed — I think there’s still room for him to round into form. I also like his chances to hook a few balls out of Yankee Stadium. This season Target Field had a 96 power park factor for LHH homers (via StatCorner) and just 93 for 2B/3B; Yankee Stadium was a 98 for 2B/3B and a 138 for home runs.

I’ll close with this: I think Hicks has all the tools, and when Sporer told me he might say something about Hicks being the next Gomez, I thought back to a tweet I made the day Hicks was moved:

Everything clicked for Carlos Gomez when was 27 and 28. Aaron Hicks will be 26 this season. I just have a weird feeling.

— Brandon Warne (@Brandon_Warne) November 12, 2015

All I’ll say is this for Hicks as a fantasy commodity: I think his stock is going up. He’ll be 26 all next season; Gomez didn’t break out until he was 26, and really took off at 27. Maybe the Twins made the same mistake again?