San Francisco Giants Pitcher Experiment Predicted To Revert Back to Bullpen

The San Francisco Giants have tried to make a pitching experiment work, but they might be better off going back to what he was known for.

Mar 14, 2025; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; San Francisco Giants pitcher Jordan Hicks against the Milwaukee Brewers during a spring training game at American Family Fields of Phoenix. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

The San Francisco Giants have been trying to make a closer to starter conversion work for a year now, how long before they decide to call it quits?

CBS Sports' Mike Axisa recently made a prediction for each team in MLB. For the Giants, it was that right-handed pitcher Jordan Hicks would make more appearances out of the bullpen than as a starting pitcher this season.

San Francisco signed Hicks to a sizable four-year, $44 million contract last offseason with hopes of converting the successful reliever to a starter.

His approach to pitching is vastly different depending on the role he is taking, and one of them clearly works better.

Hicks spent the first few years of his career as a relief pitcher. While it wasn't perfect, he showed flashes of becoming an elite closer.

His fastball was averaging triple digits and he had one of the most devastating sinkers in the game.

The year before he was signed by the Giants, he posted a 3.29 ERA with 12 saves, an 11.1 K/9 and an ERA+ of 134. He looked to finally be rounding into form.

Of course, he immediately switched it up to become a starter in San Francisco.

The biggest change made to his approach was that he had to significantly dial back his velocity to make up for the increase in work load. Both his sinker and his slider dropped nearly six miles per hour each.

With that decrease in speed, his sinker is now actually a net-negative pitch. It still has a Stuff+ rating of 112, but it got hit with much more ease last season.

His overall Stuff+ dropped from 119 to 103 and his Pitching+ dropped from 115 to 96.

Looking past the advanced stats, his performance was just very noticeable down. The 28-year-old had a 4.10 ERA with just a 7.9 K/9 and 94 ERA+.

Hicks has already split time between the starting rotation and bullpen last year, making 20 starts and nine appearances as a reliever.

Just making him a full-time reliever again and allowing him to bring his velocity back seems like their best chance of getting any real value out of his contract.

Hayden Birdsong and Carson Whisenhunt are two young, promising pitchers that could end up pushing Hicks out of the rotation.

How he starts the year will play heavily into the decision making. Hicks gave up 15 hits and eight runs while striking out just eight in 12.1 innings of work this spring. He will have to be better than that once the season begins.