SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — San Francisco Giants right-hander Jordan Hicks has thrown 236 fastballs right down the middle in his major-league career. There are different terms that people use for fastballs like this: center cut, meatballs, on a tee, on a string. There’s another one that I’m uncomfortable printing in this reputable publication but is right there on Wikipedia for everyone to read. When a pitcher is down in the count, 3-0, they’re known as get-’em-in fastballs, but hitters are swinging at more and more of those these days. All of them are the fastballs that keep pitchers up at night.
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Against those fastballs down the middle from Hicks, batters have hit .256 with a .367 slugging percentage. If the ball is put in play against those fastballs, the batter is likelier to pound the ball into the ground than anything else. If you expand the search to what Baseball Savant describes as fastballs down the “heart” of the plate, batters are hitting .245 with a .338 slugging percentage, which is still really good. That would work if it’s what batters did against all of his pitches, but that’s what they do against the pitches that should be hit to the moon.
Parents, think about teaching your kid how to throw triple-digit sinkers. It’s simply good career advice.
However, most of these numbers come from his time as a reliever. Hicks is a starter now. He won’t be throwing max effort for a single inning, trying to get three batters out. If he’s going to be a successful starter, he doesn’t have to rack up as many innings as Logan Webb, but he’ll need to give the Giants some innings. He’s appeared in 212 major-league games, and he’s thrown more than 40 pitches in just seven of them. So while he could probably thrive with 100 mph sinkers about three-quarters of the time and a sweeper for the remainder — roughly his mix as a reliever in his career — it’s unlikely that he’d have that exact same sinker or slider in a starting role. Instead of sitting 100 and touching 103, which is objectively hilarious, he might be sitting 97 and touching 100. Still hilarious, but maybe not as flummoxing for hitters seeing him for the second or third time.
Enter Hicks’ split-finger fastball. Most of the pitching stories out of spring training have been either concerning (the injuries) or frustrating (the quixotic pursuit of Blake Snell). But the early returns of Hicks’ splitter have been exciting, and a third pitch — something Hicks could throw for strikes and something that would also make hitters chase — would be a big deal.
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“That splitter Hicks was throwing the other day was ungodly,” Giants catcher Joey Bart said recently to The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly. “I don’t even understand how you can control that because it’s so nasty. That’s got to be the nastiest pitch I’ve seen so far.”
This is not a lukewarm endorsement. You don’t see a lot of hitters or catchers drop an “ungodly” tag on a pitch. There’s a lot that Hicks will need to become a starting pitcher, from better command and control to stamina, but an ungodly splitter would go a long way.
Here’s what Baseball Info Solutions says Hicks’ splitter usage has been over the last few seasons:
2019: 5.5 percent
2021: 4.3
2022: 2.7
2023: 1.6
I’m no mathematician, but I see a trend. It gets even weirder, too. Baseball Savant says that Hicks has … never thrown a splitter. He told me last week that he threw about 20 of them with the Toronto Blue Jays alone, though, which means that it’s a pitch-classification issue. If that’s the case, that means that some of the pitches labeled as changeups and the harder sweepers might have been splitters. Still, he didn’t throw a lot of them, and the ones he did throw were hit and miss. (Although, I guess when we’re talking about pitchers, maybe “miss and hit” is a better way to describe the results.)
Don’t look at last year for the splitters, though. This isn’t a project that’s new to the Giants. Bryan Price didn’t toss him The Book of Gausman on the first day of spring. Hicks has wanted this pitch as a complement for a while, and he’s going back to his first efforts with it.
“The splitter — the one I’m throwing now — was really effective in 2019,” he said. “That’s when I got hurt, and I had to push it off until I was (physically) comfortable. Now I’m comfortable.”
To be clear, it wasn’t the splitter that caused the injury, as far as anyone knows. The pitch has long had a reputation for being an arm shredder, and it wasn’t that long ago that it was out of fashion. (Bonus and possibly outdated thoughts from the Giants’ new pitching coach in there, if you’re curious.) Maybe that was true when pitchers were expected to throw eight or nine innings and nobody knew what a pitch count was, but in the modern game, the splitter is hot, baby. If you can tunnel it and pair it with the right fastball, you barely need to mess with a third pitch, even as a starter.
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The problem wasn’t that Hicks got hurt because of the split-fingered fastball, but that he got hurt right as he was making progress with it. And he was more focused on getting his old repertoire and endurance back before worrying about adding something else. Now that he’s in a rotation and feeling healthy, it’s time to turn his arsenal into a fully armed and operational battle station.
If you’re wondering why the dream for Hicks is a functional splitter and not a changeup or curve or something else, check out this really insightful video from former Giants coach Brian Bannister, explaining why he doesn’t bother teaching a changeup for some kids, even though he knows it can be a powerful weapon for others:
Some pitchers are predisposed to throwing or avoiding certain pitches because of their deliveries. The reason Mike Krukow talks about “sinker-slider guys” about once per telecast is because the sinker comes naturally to pitchers whose natural motion takes their palm toward their glove side, and so do sliders and sweepers. Those pitchers are the supinators, and Hicks is in the group. Pronators are going to be better off with a changeup. The ability to pair a controllable, plus sinker with a controllable, plus changeup is one of the reasons that Logan Webb is a freak.
(You’d better believe that I asked The Athletic’s Eno Sarris for crib notes on this. I’ll forget it all by next week.)
Hicks’ otherworldly sinker isn’t something you can teach anyone else, obviously, and the delivery lends itself to a natural pairing with a sweeper:
Jordan Hicks, 99mph Two Seamer and 87mph Sweeper, Individual Pitches + Overlay. 😳 pic.twitter.com/eXRcpYpa8E
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 9, 2023
A third direction for Hicks’ pitches to go, especially if he can command it, is just as important as his overall control when it comes to his prospects as a starting pitcher. And when it comes to that splitter from 2019, it’s going to look like this if everything is going right.
But the plan isn’t to use it solely as an out-of-zone temptation.
“As long as I’m getting that action — the depth that I’m getting — I can throw it any count,” Hicks said. “(If the count is) 0-0, I can throw it in the zone.”
And an in-zone splitter might look something like this:
Hicks has been encouraged by his early results in the spring, but he describes the pitch as being still “kind of in the experimental phase” for him.
“As of right now, I’m happy with it — the command of it,” he said. “As long as the command stays there and the action stays there, it should be a pitch I use quite frequently.”
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And it’s not a stretch to suggest that Hicks’ ability to throw a reliable split-finger will be the defining factor in his ability to thrive as a starter. It would be extremely helpful if he could limit the walks and improve his overall control, but I’m old enough to remember when the National League Cy Young Award winner also led the league in walks. That was last season, and the Giants should sign that guy, too. A pitcher with ungodly stuff and a lot of walks can win awards, much less stick in a rotation.
The third pitch will be the key to Hicks’ season and, by extension, the Giants’. The team hasn’t had a surplus of great news when it comes to their starting pitching options so far this spring, so keep an eye on the development of this split-finger. It should come in around 10 mph slower than his fastball, and it should make hitters look like absolute goobers. If that stays consistent throughout the spring, it’s a good sign for everyone involved, except for the hitters who have to face it.
(Top photo of Hicks: Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)
Grant Brisbee is a staff writer for The Athletic, covering the San Francisco Giants. Grant has written about the Giants since 2003 and covered Major League Baseball for SB Nation from 2011 to 2019. He is a two-time recipient of the SABR Analytics Research Award. Follow Grant on Twitter @GrantBrisbee
