THE PICKY BOMBER
Hicks may be Yanks’ walking machine, but he’d rather trot
Aaron Hicks may be the Yankees’ most selective hitter, but he swears he’s not looking for ball four with the bat in his hand. “I say it all the time,” Hicks said. “I mean, I’m not trying to walk, you know.” He has a funny way of showing it. Since seizing the starting center fielder job from the former star and forever injured Jacoby Ellsbury in 2017, his swing percentage is one the 20 lowest across the league. Over that same span, Hicks ranks 12th among MLB hitters in walk percentage. In 2018 and 2020, the two years Hicks earned a qualifying amount of plate appearances, he was ninth in the league in pitches seen per plate appearance.
Hicks has been with the Yankees since 2016 and his strengths have come to embody the team’s approach. No team has scored more runs than the Bombers since their 91-win breakthrough in 2017 that, not unsurprisingly, coincides with Hicks’ leap. Only the Dodgers have a higher walk percentage during that stretch.
Hicks occupies a critical place in the lineup. He’s the three-hole hitter, sandwiched between Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, and as a switch hitter, the sole left-handed bat against righty pitchers.
He doesn’t pierce atmospheric layers like Judge, Stanton or reigning home run king Luke Voit when he connects, and he doesn’t own every inch of the strike zone like DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres. But his patience extends rallies for the rest of the lineup, keeping the chains moving. If anything, he might be wearing pitchers out more than ever: His walk rate shot up from 12.2% to 19.4% in the limited season. Hicks doesn’t believe the spike was intentional — at least not on his end.
“I got definitely got a lot less fastballs,” Hicks said of hitters counts, in which pitchers traditionally throw fastballs in the zone to avoid a walk. “Back in the day 2-0...3-0, guaranteed heater, but nowadays guys are starting to more nibble with that pitch.”
Approaching a hitter with offspeed and breaking stuff while behind in the count used to be called “pitching backward,” the domain of wily, command-first pitchers that couldn’t depend on a fastball. Think of Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, much older than his listed age, guiling his way through bad counts. Or in more recent vintage, Masahiro Tanaka sneaking sliders instead of risking getting his four-seamer served into the bleachers.
Hicks compounds the issue — for pitchers, not him — because his elite discipline allows him to work the favorable counts that then lead to more stuff that’s either harder to locate in the zone or intentionally thrown to get him chasing.
Taking pride in his discipline, Hicks said the changes in how pitchers gameplan “has given me the opportunity to be able to walk more. That 3-1 cutter inside for a ball doesn’t affect me.”
Even better for the Yankees is that there may be room for growth. Despite a strong 2020, it was his first year back from offseason Tommy John surgery on an elbow that plagued him the previous year and he believes compromised his swing from the left side. As a result, he wasn’t able to attack with the same authority. The results: more grounders, fewer deep flies, and too many pop ups compared to his reasonably healthy 2017-18 seasons. More than one in every
five of Hicks’ plate appearances skied in the infield against right-handed pitchers.
l 2017-18: 16.3% BB%
GB%, 13% IFFB%
l 2020: 20.4% BB%
GB%, 20.7% IFFB%
Hicks’ 2020 numbers aren’t even that bad — neither are the Yankees’, who were 16% better than average against righties — but they are a drop off. This could be an important one on the margins. One example would be when the Bombers match up against same-sided pitchers who excel | .208 ISO | .194 ISO | .459 SLG | .411 SLG, | 42% | 45.7%
against righties, like Tampa’s dominant righty-centric relief corps.
Drawing walks, as Hicks does no matter the state of his elbow, can’t hurt. But as he mentioned, pitchers are more willing than ever to let him take first base so long as he doesn’t clear all the bases. “Controlling the strike zone is definitely something that I love in my game,” Hicks said. But as the veteran center fielder often reminds us, it’s not the only thing. He intends to flex more of the rest this year.