With lower speed, Hicks still refuses to slow down against Rockies originally appeared in NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO – Jordan Hicks doesn’t try to hide it. After each fastball, the Giants pitcher looks at the scoreboard to check his velocity.
Part of that is seeing exactly where he is and calibrating that with the swing he just saw from a hitter. But some of that is probably just habit for a right-hander who hit 105 mph in the big leagues and got used to firing up radar guns as a young St. Louis reliever.
In the first innings Sunday, Hicks would see 90 or 91 mph when he looked up. There were even some in the 89 mph range, a worrying sign for just about any righty, but especially for someone as talented as Hicks. He wasn’t worried, though.
Hicks revealed after a 4-1 victory in the Colorado Rockies, he threw up his pregame meal, along with all the water he drank to hydrate in his tenth start of the year. When he entered the bullpen to begin warmups, he gave a warning to Curt Casali, his new catcher.
“I’m 92 today,” he said.
It wasn’t the ideal way to try to sweep, but it made the win — the fourth in a row for the Giants and the fourth this season for Hicks — that much more encouraging. Hicks already appears to be taking graduate courses in his transition from reliever to starter, and on Sunday he allowed just one solo home run in five innings without his best stuff. He mixed and matched, leaning heavily on a divider that was also going about four miles per hour.
And when the Rockies loaded the bases in the sixth when they led 1-0, Hicks threw a rare four-seamer, reaching 96 mph to get an inning-ending pop-up from Charlie Blackmon. You can thank the mid-game bananas and salted caramel stroopwafels for the extra energy.
“What makes it a little easier is when you have four pitches to choose from,” Hicks said. “The slider, I was really just in the top zone today. The splitter was doing all kinds of things, coming down and breaking left… I thought the four-seam pitch was a really good pitch today, even though I just has played about six times. Those four seams loaded at the base. [Blackmon]I thought it was a very good argument.
“And Curt did a great job today of closing out the game. I didn’t have to tremble much, I just trusted him. the game and how he does it. It was good to see that and it’s good to be on the same page. [for] our first start.”
Casali has not yet suffered any defeat in his second stint with the Giants, which has won four straight after hitting a season low Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers. They’ll be back on the road just two games under .500, with an offense that’s suddenly moving forward thanks to an infusion of youth.
The Giants have always known they have the pitching to compete if they can score and defend. If this offensive stretch is sustainable beyond a series against the Rockies pitching staff, they could finally be ready to make a run.
Hicks won’t get his next chance to keep the momentum going until next Saturday, but this extra break is a positive. He will be on an innings restriction at some point this season, and manager Bob Melvin said Sunday that Hicks would go five innings regardless of what happens in his final frame.
By getting the pop-up, Hicks lowered his ERA to 2.38, which ranks fifth in the National League. His first 10 games couldn’t have gone much better, and even Sunday’s unfortunately timed stomach upset came with a silver lining. This gave Hicks another opportunity to prove that he has become a pitcher, not just someone who throws really, really hard.
Hicks said that in the past he would sometimes drop 101 to 98 to throw off the hitter’s timing. On Sunday, the numbers were much smaller, but the concept was the same.
“That tells me my sinker with this action is good at pretty much any speed above 87, 88,” he said. “I’m pretty confident in that pitch at any speed, to be honest, and today kind of reaffirms that and gives me that confidence in [any] see him.”
