By Katie Woo, Ken Rosenthal, Aaron Gleeman and Melissa Lockard
The San Francisco Giants and right-handed pitcher Jordan Hicks agreed on a four-year, $44 million contract, league sources confirmed. ESPN was the first to report the news.
Hicks finally turned his high-octane raw stuff into high-end performance at age 26, posting a 3.29 ERA with a career-high 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings for St. Louis and Toronto.
It was Hicks’ first year with an ERA below 4.00 in at least 30 innings since his rookie season in 2018, and his 100.3 mph average fastball velocity ranked second in the majors behind Twins flame-thrower Jhoan Duran.
Hicks ranked No. 23 on The Athletic’s list of top 40 MLB free agents.
Source confirms: Jordan Hicks in agreement with Giants on four-year, $44M free-agent contract. Will get chance to start. First: @JeffPassan.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 12, 2024
Scouting report
Hicks’ power sinker produces a tantalizing combo of missed bats and ground balls as long as he throws strikes. That’s been a challenge for most of his career, and was an issue at times even last season, but a 27-year-old late-inning reliever with a 100 mph sinker and just 13 career homers allowed in 1,041 plate appearances won’t be lacking in multi-year offers. Hicks picked the perfect time for everything to click. — Aaron Gleeman, MLB staff writer
How Hicks fits with Giants
Coming into the offseason, the Giants’ rotation was fairly unsettled beyond Cy Young runner-up Logan Webb, and even with the recent additions of Robbie Ray and now Hicks, it remains something of a work in progress. Both Ray (Tommy John surgery) and right-hander Alex Cobb (hip surgery) will begin the season on the injured list. Cobb is expected to return in May, while Ray won’t likely make his Giants’ debut until around the All-Star break.
As our Grant Brisbee laid out earlier this week, the Giants’ opening-day rotation before the Hicks signing was slated to be Webb, Ross Stripling and three inexperienced starters — Kyle Harrison, Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck. Cobb and Ray were expected to bolster that rotation as the season progressed. With the addition of Hicks, the Giants now are a little less dependent on all three of those young starters being at the top of their game at the start of the season.
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But given that Hicks has been a reliever almost exclusively in the major leagues, he isn’t going to be able to handle a traditional starter’s workload in 2024. Stripling, Beck and Winn all have experience coming out of the bullpen, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see one of them paired with Hicks as a piggy-back starter to split the first five to six innings as Hicks is stretched out. Right-hander Sean Hjelle is another option to be used as a piggy-back starter/long reliever. And if Hicks’ transition to the rotation stalls, he can return to the bullpen, where he’d join a strong back end that already includes All-Star closer Camilo Doval, set-up men Tyler and Taylor Rogers and Luke Jackson.
Despite Hicks’ power arsenal, he has been a groundball pitcher throughout his career rather than a strikeout pitcher. Per Brisbee, the Giants already featured the top-two groundball-inducing starters last season (Webb and Cobb), so Hicks would fit right into that mix.
Though Hicks has five years of major-league experience, he is still just 27 years old, and it’s reasonable to believe there is still developmental upside left with him. The four-year commitment is the second-longest contract (behind Webb’s extension from last year) the Giants have given out to a pitcher in the Farhan Zaidi era. Hicks is not just a play for 2024 but someone the organization can build around for the future. — Melissa Lockard, Giants staff writer
What Hicks did in St. Louis
Hicks was one of the top available relief arms this offseason due to his young age and high velocity. Several clubs expressed interest in him, including St. Louis, but the chance to start was a driving factor in his decision.
Though he’s been used mostly as a high-leverage reliever in his career, Hicks was used as a starting pitcher by the Cardinals to open up the 2022 season. The results were mixed: Hicks’ velocity was down and he recorded a high walk rate (21 walks against 120 batters faced), while posting a nearly identical strikeout-to-walk ratio at 1.19. However, the Cardinals had Hicks build up innings at the major-league level, instead of during spring training.
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As a result, many of those starts only accounted for three to four innings. The experiment lasted eight starts before a forearm strain landed him on the Injured List. — Katie Woo, Cardinals beat writer
Hicks wants starting opportunity
San Francisco’s decision to use Hicks as a starting pitcher may come as a surprise given his success as a reliever, but Hicks has always wanted a rotation opportunity. The key for Hicks is to balance maintaining velocity while staying in the strike zone. Though he has a lengthy injury history, he was healthy for all of 2023, marking the first time in his professional career that he avoided the Injured List for an entire season. Given his powerful arm and electric sinker and slider combination, Hicks is an intriguing pick for a creative Giants team. — Woo
Required reading
- How to be a normal angry Giants fan, and how to be an annoying angry Giants fan
- Where the Giants’ Opening Day roster might stand after the Robbie Ray trade
(Photo: Dan Hamilton / USA Today)
