The Yankees announced that veteran outfielder Aaron Hicks, whom they designated for assignment earlier this week, has now been released.
Hicks is in the fifth season of a seven-year, $70MM contract that didn’t pan out nearly as well as the Yankees hoped. The former first-round pick and top prospect hit .255/.368/.470 (128 wRC+) with 42 home runs for the Yankees from 2017-18, and he gave them a respectable .231/.350/.431 output in the 2019-20 seasons. Since that time, however, his offensive production has cratered as injuries have mounted. Hicks hit just .188/.263/.261 in 76 plate appearances this season and is a .209/.315/.310 hitter in 655 plate appearances dating back to 2021.
For all his struggles, Hicks has generally graded as an average or better left fielder in recent years. His once-excellent defense in center field has faded, but he posted a hefty 8 Defensive Runs Saved through just 413 innings in left field as recently as 2022. The switch-hitter hasn’t had success regardless of opponent in 2022-23, but Hicks had a decent showing against lefties in 2021 and has a career .247/.327/.415 batting line as a right-handed hitter facing lefties. He’s also walked in 12.5% of his 3352 Major League plate appearances, including an above-average 9.2% walk rate even in the midst of this year’s freefall at the dish.
Hicks clearly isn’t the player he was at his peak, but now that he’s been released and the Yankees are going to be stuck picking up the tab, he’d make some sense for an outfield-needy club — particularly one seeking some help against left-handed pitching. Hicks is hardly a lock to rediscover any of his former production, but it won’t cost another team much to see if escaping the Yankee Stadium spotlight and the constant scrutiny surrounding his contract and diminished play can help him rebound to at least some extent. He certainly wouldn’t be the first player to rebuild some stock after leaving the Yankees for a lower-pressure environment.
The Yankees remain on the hook for the rest of this year’s $10.5MM salary and will also owe Hicks a $9.5MM salary in each of the next two seasons, plus a $1MM buyout on a 2026 club option. Any team that wants to sign Hicks will only owe him the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the big league roster. That sum will be subtracted from the Yankees’ obligation to Hicks, but even if Hicks catches on with a new club and sticks on the roster moving forward, the Yanks are stuck with the overwhelming majority of that contract.
Hicks is a weird outlier for the team which typically refuses to do any sort of pre-FA extensions. That was, if memory serves, a big deal during the Aaron Judge drama.
Quite true chestbridge. and I’ve said this before but, the one time they departed from this pattern they signed two players to long-term contracts in the same year, and neither worked out. That you can say that both were disastrous. Severino even worse since he barely even played through the duration of his extension. the problem then becomes they use it as an excuse not to do these extensions or long-term contracts again, when the problem was not long term contracts themselves in a given case, but the thought process behind signing those two particular flawed players.
@dr2022
Hicks has always been polarizing and certainly came with some risk but what made you put Severino in the same discussion as Hicks? He was 25 yo coming off two consecutive 190+ innings of successful pitching without a injury history. The amount, like Hicks’ contract was relatively modest at 4/$40 mil. Many felt, including me, that the Severino signing was a great move.
Good riddance
Cashman is an idiot and your top 4 players make a combined 150M per season! Doesn’t leave much to pay the other 22 roster slots! Volpe is just the latest in a long list of over hyped minor league players! Cashman is the reason the Yankees haven’t been to a World Series since 2009! All he is good at is spending Steinbrenner’s money!
Please shut up about what they spend. And please stop acting like the Yankees are the ones publishing all of these prospect lists. They obviously value him but so did t of the other GM’s and “experts”. Besides, it’s way to rely in his career to call him a bust. He’s at least showing some power (9 homers) and speed (13 of 13). For a 22 yo that basically jumped from AA to the mlb he shows promise.
Yeah, the two pre-FA extensions that come to mind are the Hicks deal and also Severino’s. The Yankees didn’t get their money’s worth with either.
That is quite true, hatter. They even got less of their moneys worth with Severino( if that is possible), because he has barely played throughout the duration of the extension. at least Hicks had a few passable years, before all the injuries and the decline.
In fact many questioned the signing of Severino at the time, because he appeared to get injured as soon as the ink was dry on the contract, almost as if he knew he was injured already himself, and that was why he took such a team friendly contract, for such a good quality pitcher.
Teams who spend will sometimes win but other times they don’t. Look at the Red Sox. They bombed with Carl Crawford, Panda, Hanley and while Price was a factor in 18, otherwise he was a horror. At the time of the signings of Severino and Hicks, not many opposed either deal.
@dewey, I loved those contracts because I wasn’t high on any of those players and I hated the Dodgers for bailing them out of those. Well Crawford, Adrian and Beckett contracts. I still don’t know what backdoor shenanigans went on for the Dodgers to make that deal outside of Adrian.
Dr – Your last paragraph describing the Severino extension is identical to what happened with the Sale extension. Everyone thought it was odd he took a team-friendly deal and so quickly, and of course a short time later it was evident he would need TJS.
Man, in hindsight, what a bizarre deal from every angle. Everything about the Hicks-Yankees saga was bizarre. Talk about the fallacies and follies of analytics driven decision making.
Trading for Hicks and then extending Hicks early, overly long and for a deflated AAV in exchange for extra years was the Yankees going full Billy Ball one time and it going about as poorly as statistically (natch) possible.
But it’s a valuable lesson: Don’t extend guys too early and if you think someone is worth an amount over a certain number of years, just give them that amount over those number of years and don’t overcomplicate it to be clever.
If they really thought Hicks was gonna get $8M in his final year of arbitration and 4 years/$62M in free agency, they should’ve just given him 5 years/$70M and been done with it. He still wasn’t worth the money in the end.
OR they should’ve just given Hicks 1 year/$10M, overpaid him and let him walk.
The Yankees have done this with other guys they really liked but didn’t think would hold up long term- like Phil Hughes. They overpaid him in his final year of arbitration and then they let him walk. They knew Swisher wouldn’t hold up over a free agency deal’s term, so they under bid to force him to leave and his Guardians deal didn’t really work out.
I do not get why Aaron Hicks of all players was the guy they took this kind of a chance on- but this ignominious and early ending is poetic justice for the bizarre set of unnecessary gambles and luxury tax manipulations this contract represented.
Good for Hicks- I hope he takes the $20M retirement package and spends the rest of his life golfing, like he’d prefer to, ego aside.
You’re right about this trillionaire. The Yankees typically do not make these types of moves, long-term contracts or early extensions or whatever even on players that are worthy of it like Aaron Judge for example. But in the same year they did it on two players, and both contracts did not work out, I’m obviously talking about Aaron hicks and Severino, the latter also who has been perpetually injured since the contract was signed . Truly bizaare why they picked these two players to do this with, when there were other players more worthy, which Yankee fans perpetually criticize the team for.
The only common denominator with these two contracts was, Yankees thought they were getting two pretty good players for really really cheap. But there’s no free lunch, and we see what happens when the Yankees go cheap. They usually get the short end of the stick. To wit, montas a more recent example. or even Stanton, who although making a lot of money every year, the team did not have to give up really anything for him ,and he did not have an injury history at the time. So they thought they were getting him on the cheap somewhat also. We see how that has been a major disaster. Handcuffing the team for years because of his massive contract, and always waiting for him to realize his massive potential but he is always injured or working his way back from injury.
I think in the case of Aaron hicks, the team did not feel too bad about cutting him at this point because they felt probably got their moneys worth out of him, he had 3 to 4 pretty good years so they could justify that spending $70 million for that, it was worth it and that’s what they were doing with extending the contract at the time, spreading out what would be a typical payment for a player of that caliber for about three or four years, to seven years for luxury tax purposes.
The Hicks deal looked great for the team at the time. Don’t act like you knew any better at the time the deal was signed.
Who says it looked great at the time, you? I guess you’re the expert on this subject. I didn’t know. It didn’t look great to me at the time, he was an off injured player already at that time. Which made the deal appear questionable to many, especially the length
It looked great at the time….
I knew better at the time. it sucked, then, and it still sucks.
Glad he’s gone. i wish the genius that thought he, Donalddone, and Gallo were good deals… was also out the door.
Spot on Bronxmac. that’s the biggest problem with this team now and going forward, cashman. as long as he’s here, these asinine moves will continue to be made. Steinbrenner is at fault too, not for failing to spend ,of which he spends plenty, but for keeping Cashman on, to continue to make these blunders, every year the latter could be accused of misappropriation of funds.
Cashman keeps assembling, and then re-assembling, old, arthritic, expensive teams. And then it’s obvious that the lineups, with these old arthritics, are not constructed by actual baseball people, but dweebs with pie-charts and bar graphs. Which is why Judge, with 62 HRs, barely tops Ramirez of Cleveland, in RBI.
Sad but true. sad because he is allowed to keep doing this, year after year after year after decade. With no accountability.
Most teams willing to spend so much spend unwisely. LA is the only team I can think of that has spent wisely, many times at least. Betts and Freeman are all time great players who are very dedicated and athletic (see Freeman do a split every game) and have little injury history. Teams like Tampa are forced to be more creative and that forces them to be better at their job. I guess Gerrit Cole was not a bad deal so far. DJ has provided some nice years. But the last couple years have been (from an outside perspective) the most boring Yankee team (offensively at least) I can remember, and considering Judge hit 62 hrs that’s really saying something.
George would’ve fired him five or six times by now!
(:^)
It’s funny because the Yankees had Hicks through 2019, so aside from 2020, they didn’t really get any more of Aaron Hicks than they already had.
That is quite true.
Could have been worse. They acquired Hicks the same offseason Jason Heyward was a free agent
Everything U said is spot on proving Cashman is an idiot and The Yankees will never win another World Series with him in charge! 2 months in how does Volpe look now? Just another over hyped Yankee prospect!
Not sure Volpe is a good example of Cashman’s struggles and successes. Give the kid time – adjusting to MLB pitching is not a natural for everyone – as a good amount of top prospects that started the year have already been sent down for that reason. I always wonder about the “over hyped prospect” language directed at the Yankees. Don’t all teams have that? How many of the top 5 from each team become all-stars?
Yanks win this year dude..
So who picks up Hicks?
4, 5, 6, pick up Hicks
6, 7, 8, pick up dead weight
It seems like a Pirates move. Hicks would probably hit enough to stick with the team the rest of the year. Good chance he gets his act together without Yankee fans heckling him 24/7.
Pirates don’t need him. Hell, we just DFA’d Andujar for the second time.
White Sox
Baseball is a funny sport , someone will pick him up as 4th OF depth , he’ll play well away from the Zoo , be an integral part of a good team. After three years of zilcho. Seen it so many times.
What on earth are you even talking about?
Hicks was a top prospect who over the previous two season was playing like a superstar, solid defense, high batting average, high on base, hitting for power and had speed. It was a deserving extension that paid him through his prime years. He never got “over paid” nor was the extension too long. Obviously the extension didn’t workout, he struggled with injuries and seemed to lose interest in playing but your entire post is filled with inaccuracies.
It is a pretty lazy and inaccurate post. Hicks was coming off two seasons with OBP 372 and 366, and OPS+ of 122 and 127. He played a solid CF and his total WAR for those seasons is 8.3. He was approaching his age 29 season. The signing was for a pretty reasonable salary considering what followed, and the duration would take him to age 35 – hardly crazy. It didn’t work out – at all. That’s not debatable. But the revisionist argument that it was a stupid signing is misguided.
It was a stupid signing then.
It’s a stupid sign now.
It will be a stupid signing always.
Yes
I don’t know anybody who didn’t balk at the 7 year length when it was announced. Every pundit, including Hicks’ own camp, were anticipating and aiming for 3-4 years at $13M-$17M a season once he hit free agency. Pretty sure that even if they were optimistic about his ability to hold up and provide plus value on a deal, they weren’t expecting more than 3-4 years on the open market.
One of the main reasons Hicks was so productive and valuable before the extension was the way he was deployed as a player- he was a platoon player, a complimentary piece who was a part time starter and more often than not a middle or late innings replacement to the starter.
He made the most of his playing time, producing around 4 WAR over 80 or so games- but I think that’s what he was. A guy who was extremely valuable in a part time capacity. A guy who was gonna give you 4 WAR over 80 games with a lot of down time and limited overall playing time- he was not a guy who was going to give you 7 or 8 WAR over a full season.
His per plate appearance numbers were through the roof and off the charts great, yes, but he didn’t do that over a full season and the guys he got compared to *did* do it over a full season, which is why those types of players received deals worth $20M to $35M a year and Hicks was hoping for $15.25M a year at best on the open market and it’s why he settled for $10M AAV- because his value didn’t come from a place of durability. And yet as soon as that extension was signed, he was deployed as a starting full time player who was factored into the team’s plans as someone who’d play around 115 games a year on average at most, with a ton of lay off and that’d be a heavy year for him- so it’d be more like 100 games a year if the contract were to work out.
So what happens? His plays to a statistical value that is way over what a guy being platooned like him typically plays to, he’s treated like a starter, his productivity drops off a bunch but he hangs in there for one “full” season of 137 games- he gets the extension and his body immediately falls apart, he only plays close a full season one more time and he’s only worth 1.6 WAR when they signed him to be a guy who should have theoretically produced around 5.6 WAR over that same number of games.
I think if they had kept using him in a very limited platoon capacity, he’d have continued to give them 3-4 WAR, he’d have stayed relatively healthy and he’d have basically lived up to the value of the deal or exceeded the on paper value.
Basically you know those guys like deGrom who are always injured, who the teams treat with kid gloves and are willing to let them lose 75% or more of their potential playing time in order to squeeze the most high leverage value out of them over the 25% of games they do manage to stay healthy for?
Yankees should’ve done that with Hicks. Told themselves: He’s a $30M a year player if he played all year, but he can’t hold up for a full season, so lets pro-rate his contract (they did that part) and also limit his playing time so that he stays healthy and productive for the time he does play, rather than over play him and have his body break down and lose all his value while still having to pay him anyway (which is what they wound up doing)
Nah
Your memory deceives you, the stats don’t back up your statements
Wow, TTO gives Samuel a run for this money on being the longest winded airbag, pompous clown on here. Take a breath & carry on. Ahahaha!
Platoon?
2017 .816 ops against right, .903 against left
2018 .846 ops against right, .801 against left
2016 okay against right, terrible against left
2015 great against left, terrible against right
2015 great against left, terrible against right
2019 good against right, terrible against left
2020 decent against both .794 and .793
2021 good against left, bad against right
2022 bad/bad
So since you’re the smartest person on the board, how would you have utilized him as a platoon player? You have great insight into ways to keep him healthy and what kind of contract he should have signed and what the Yankees should have done, elaborate.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
Both on Hicks and your definition of ‘superstar’. .
Twins could use a CF XD
He’ll be picked up. Question is, which teams are the likely ones?
Does the PGA have intramural games?
Haha. I don’t even think they want him.
Of course he’ll be picked up, his services now would be virtually free. The Mets after all picked up Sanchez, who nobody wanted,of course they cut him a week later but he didn’t cost them anything.
Sanchez cost the Mets $1.1 MM for 3 games, and with the penalty level they’re at, another $800k on top of that.
Yikes
White Sox
Marlins have a big hole there.
Word on the street is that he is about to sign a minor league deal with the whitesoxs . You heard it here first ! Stay tuned.
Ha!…. Pharm, I figured you would be on vacation, in the greater New York area, and would have run into Hicks at a local eating establishment…. With you wearing an obscure White Sox jersey, of course.
Agreed. Hicks will be the next retread waiting in the wings for when Clint Frazier gets DFAd in a couple weeks.
Guardians for sure.
“…an outfield-needy club — particularly one seeking some help against left-handed pitching.” That’s the long way of spelling Blue Jays.
Hicks’ ‘metrics, which aren’t good, still don’t tell how bad he is/was.
This whole contract was, and is, a huge mistake. And no hindsight is involved.
Never that good a player. Certainly not worth a 7-year deal at any price.
His best skill, if you will, was getting walks and getting on base. That’s about it. It elevated all his other stats. Made him look better than he really was.
He’ll ink a deal with the A’s and hit like crazy and be flipped to the Twins at the deadline. Hicks will then hit a walkoff 4 run homer to eliminate the Yankees in the wildcard.
Seamus, I believed everything until you used the Twins :):)
I’m tired of people acting like this 70 million over 10 years was a “mistake”. He was awful. I’m glad he is gone, but $10 million per year is what the Yankees should pay a fourth outfielder. It is Brandon belt money for crying out loud. There are no risk-free signings ever. But acting like his salary was holding back the organization is loser talk. Who cares if he went full Ellsbury. Stop acting like the Yankees are the Royals.
lark… i don’t care what you’re tired of. I’m tired of Hicks taking up valuable playing time because Cashman is trying to justify a horrible deal. Same with JD, Gallo, Fatchez & Stanton,
bronx, in reality how much playing time sid he really take away? unless you’re going with the notion Yanks could have signed a better player in 2020. I believe that is what you mean, as in-house i don’t think there were many propect CF lighting it up in Scranton 2019-present
The problem I have, jope, is the Yanks’ (Cashman’s) tendency to spend outrageously on veterans, then force the manager to PLAY said veterans due to (justify) those salaries… instead of developing and playing the best available guys, regardless of salary. In Hicks’ case, the length of the deal, I thought, was ridiculous. We’re not talking Bernie Williams, here.
The net result of Cashman’s deals are the lineups we see now. Lots of old, oft-injured players, and young stopgaps with low ceilings.
Now we are talking. Boone should have been fired for playing Hicks in 130 games last year. It is not Hicks’ fault Boone kept putting his name on the lineup card. The roster spot is worth more than $10 million per year which is the same conclusion the front office finally came to. This is the right conversation, not the Yankees shoudn’t pay Brandon Belt/A.J. Pollock money for a fourth outfielder. Like I said, complaining about the money is loser talk. This is about a player on the roster that is not contributing.
Exactly. In most cases, I don’t object to a higher AAV. Bit long term deals, especially into a player’s mid-30s… Nah.
Even Aaron Judge’s.
So Boone is sitting it out tonight because of tangling with the umps?
I read he did a Bill Cowher. Aaron has his foibles, but he’s a SAVAGE in that dugout!
Haha. and the players are just banging
Saddest part about all of this is Brett Gardner could’ve given the Yankees better production and continued his climb up some Yankee career stat leaderboards. But nooooo they had to stick with the sunk cost of Hicks instead of realizing they made a mistake, admitting it, and stopped wasting the roster space on him. Just feel bad for Gardy.
Let’s not rewrite history too much. Hicks was a top ranked prospect who didn’t get traction in Minnesota. Yankees swapped John Ryan Murphy for him, who people thought could hit. Hicks had over 8 WAR combined over the 2017/18 and while he didn’t look like a star, he did look like a quality player, He wasn’t even bad last year. The Yankees just got tired of the will he be injured/will he stink back and forth. He’s a bit like Hosmer…sort if playable under the right circumstances, but basically holding a roster spot.
His lifetime OPS+ , before this year, was 98. That’s below MLB average.
And he was terrible last year. Good grief.
I know who’s signing Aaron Hicks.
The Saudis will soon announce that Hicks, Eric Hosmer and Trevor Bauer are joining their newly-formed, reputation-laundering “VII Tour”.
Seven-inning ballgames will feature Robo Umps, 3 balls and 5 strikes, faded name players and outlaws including Pete Rose as Commissioner.
The VII Tour will raid existing franchises for anyone willing to take their crazy money to bid adieu to Organized Ball.
A favored rule will be “right field is out”, necessitated by most teams lacking 9 players for awhile.
Liberal attendance policies will include show-your-firearm-get-in-free.
Steroids and PED’s are mandatory
):0o
WITBlueF?
Contract looked like an albatross before the ink dried. Yanks just keep overpaying these guys.
It was a good contract. Just a shame a 33 year old has gone through all these injuries. It’s really gotten to him.
We’ll have to agree to vehemently disagree.
The Yankees just like to throw money at problems. I’m shocked when looking at comments no one mentioned Yankee outfield superstar Jacoby Ellsbury. Steinbrenner just says get this person or your fired because I read an article that says he good, hit bat well and does stuff in that grassy place, then hangs up his cell phone from the golf course. Their analytics department is just a poster that says “do what Hal says, it’s his money (yeah it’s probably a bad idea by baseball standards, but yankee fans will keep buying up merch)!
Maybe not in terms of money spent. This still has to at least be listed as one of the worst contracts that did not pan out.
“One of the worst”? That’s ridiculous. Of course money is a factor in a comment like that. It cannot not be. There are tons of worse contracts, big contracts for guys who become mediocre (Yelich) and/or don’t show up (Rendon).
The career splits tell an interesting tale that many Yankees players have experienced over the years: Career OPS+ at home: 109 on road: 91. I take this to mean he was probably never much more than a league average hitter even at his peak.
Be positive. Now Gary and he can get together and watch the whole Twilight Saga series on Netflix all they want!!
This would have been a good move three years ago.
Will someone else take on Aaron Hicks? I wouldn’t think he would be will to go to MiLB.
As long as it’s not the Yankees MiLB. I hope he plays for the LI Ducks.
Perhaps Aaron Hicks will return to Minnesota.
The Twins have an overabundance of light-hitting, low B.A. outfielders, especially corner outfielders who seem to take turns rotating through the IL list.
Hicks would just take his turn on the IL rotation, along with Joey Gallo, Max Kepler, Byron Buxton and the others., especially with the Yankees paying his salary.