Jordan Hicks Addresses His 2017 FanGraphs Scouting Report

Jordan Hicks wasn’t yet reaching triple digits when our 2017 St. Louis Cardinals Top Prospects list was published in January of that year. Ranked 14th in the system at the time, the 2015 third-round pick out of Texas’s Cyprus Creek High School was throwing — per Eric Longenhagen — a comparably modest 96 mph. That soon changed. The high-octane right-hander went on to eclipse the 100 mark that summer, and early the next season he was clocked at 105 while pitching in the big leagues against the Philadelphia Phillies.

He’s since ridden a bit of a rollercoaster. Hicks followed a solid 2018 rookie campaign by logging 14 saves and a 3.14 ERA over two-plus months in 2019, but he blew out his elbow in June and underwent Tommy John surgery. As a Type-1 diabetic, he sat out the entire 2020 pandemic campaign. More elbow woes cropped up in 2021, limiting him to just 10 big league innings.

Changes of address have been notable in Hicks’ subsequent seasons, as have his job descriptions. The righty remained a reliever throughout 2023 — a year that saw him dealt from the Cardinals to the Toronto Blue Jays at the trade deadline — but he was then converted to a starter after signing as a free agent with the San Francisco Giants prior to last season. His success in that role having been a mixed bag, Hicks now finds himself back in the bullpen — with yet another team. Acquired by the Boston Red Sox as part of last month’s Rafael Devers trade, he has gone on to make nine appearances and register a pair of saves while allowing four earned runs over seven 1.3 innings. His fastball velocity has topped out at 101.5 mph.

What did his 2017 FanGraphs scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what Eric wrote and asked Hicks to respond to it.

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“A relatively undercooked prep arm from the 2015 draft.”

“Undercooked? I guess if you’re cooking a steak and you want it medium, I was rare,” Hicks said of that quote. “I didn’t have a lot of innings. At that point I had only thrown around 50 innings, and another 50 in high school. So, it was maybe 50 varsity innings and 50 pro innings. I think that’s probably what he meant by that.”

“His fastball sits 90-94, will touch 96, and comes in at an odd angle with some late sink.”

“That sounds right,” replied Hicks. “I was probably hitting 98 by then, to be fair, but I was sitting between 90 and 96. As for the odd angle, I guess that would have been my arm slot being a little lower — way lower than it is now. Not sidearm, but low. And definitely not consistent.

“The sink is something that’s always been there,” he added. “Even from the outfield — I played outfield in high school — I’d be throwing guys out with a sinker. I picked that grip up, and it played with sink.”

“He has some nascent feel for an average power curveball in the 78-83 mph range that will flash 55/60 on the scale.”

“Yeah, I was throwing a curveball back then,” said Hicks. “I was just trying to find something that would break. I didn’t really know what I was doing, to be honest. I was still learning.

“I think the last time I threw the curveball was in High-A, or maybe in the Fall League of 2017. The next year I started working with a slider — now we’d call it a sweeper — and now I’m back to a slider. It’s been a back and forth between slider and sweeper since then.”

“His command wavered due to some pretty heavy release-point variation…”

“There you go,” Hicks interjected. “That’s what I was just saying; my arm slot wasn’t consistent back then.”

“… but he’s a solid athlete with a good body and the command should come with time.”

“I’m better than [a] solid athlete,” Hicks said smiling. “But I appreciate it.”

“It doesn’t sound like there’s much changeup feel here right now, and you have to project on it pretty heavily to envision Hicks as anything more than a league-average starter.”

“The changeup wasn’t great back then,” he acknowledged. “There wasn’t much feel. I’ve thrown more of a splitter in the big leagues. I don’t know if I’ve even… I guess I threw a changeup for one year. It was OK. But I’ve thrown mostly splitters.

“I started throwing a splitter in 2019, or the end of 2018. In 2018, I was really just sinker-slider and was mostly focused on throwing really hard. That’s all I was really trying to do back then — getting up to 105 and sitting 100.

“I topped out at 98 in Johnson City, which was advanced rookie ball,” Hicks said when asked to elaborate on his velocity timeline. “It slowly creeped up every year, every season. I made a big jump, going from 98 to hitting 101 in Low-A, hitting 102 in the Fall League, and then in the big leagues 105. It was a combination of everything, but a lot of it was getting a feel for my mechanics. I remember the day it clicked. It was in the Low-A All-Star Game. I was throwing 100, feeling something I really liked, and didn’t want to lose it. I kind of just ran with it.”

“He’s a great distance from the majors, but I have him tentatively projected as a high-risk no. 4 starter and consider him the most interesting domestic draftee pitcher in the system.”

“For sure,” Hicks said. “I mean, I was definitely a high prospect. I started off lower, but as I progressed in the minors I jumped pretty fast. And I was a starter. It’s gone back and forth, but overall I think I could still do it; I could start. I just had a tough year this year.

“But yeah, the report was pretty accurate,” Hicks added. “I’ve come a long way since then. It has been years, but it feels like yesterday, to be honest. The minor leagues were really fun for me. It was a short stint, but I really enjoyed playing in those small cities.”

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Previous “Old Scouting Reports Revisited” interviews can be found through these links: Shane Baz, Cody Bellinger, Matthew Boyd, Dylan Cease, Matt Chapman, Erick Fedde, Kyle Freeland, Max Fried, Lucas Giolito, Randal Grichuk, Ian Happ, Jeff Hoffman, Tanner Houck, Matthew Liberatore, Tyler Mahle, Sean Newcomb, Bailey Ober, Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Joe Ryan, Max Scherzer, Marcus Semien.