Aaron Hicks is in the zone

Aaron Hicks is putting in work. The Yankees’ offseason addition has been at the minor league facility for about a month, working on his swing and taking reps from the left side of the plate. The switch-hitter struggled from that side in his first three big league seasons, and is working with assistant hitting coach Marcus Thames to find more consistency. Consistency would go a long way in the battle for playing time this season, a battle which may have a victor sooner rather than later. Brett Gardner comes into spring training with a lingering wrist issue that he's been dealing with since the Wild Card game last season. The bone bruises he's been dealing with can take up to a year to completely heal, so Hicks is putting in the work now to become a significant contributor to this team when his name is called. All of this should come as welcome news for Yankees fans, as Hicks had a less than stellar reputation with the Twins organization for being lackadaisical in his approach to the game. It would seem that he’s trying to put both his struggles and that reputation behind him. So what’s he working on? Hicks wants to work on getting his swing through the zone and to keep it there longer to maximize impact. All of that may seem obvious, but he’s tailoring his approach to get more line drives, which would be helpful; Hicks had 64 line drives last year or around 22.9% of his balls in play.

That’s actually comparatively high with other batters in the league, but his desire for more line drives may stem from aggression with pitches in the zone and a need for a little more discipline when it comes to pitches outside of it, as you can see with this graph:

That 21% swing percentage at the very bottom left corner of the graph? It probably isn't producing any big time hits. A more disciplined, zone-focused approach could help Hicks take off in 2016 and look more like the player who was at one point one of the most highly ranked outfield prospects in the game. Hicks is undoubtedly hoping to fix his struggles from the left side of the plate for Yankee stadium so he can help baseballs meet the short porch in right field. Elevating pitches with line drives will ultimately be more productive than ground balls, which constituted 41.8% of the balls he put in play last season. Several graphs (like the one below) paint a pretty clear picture of Hicks. He’s certainly had his struggles, but over his first two seasons he’s steadily improved and was playing around the league average in several statistical categories last season.

And while he’ll probably have to adjust to not getting regular playing time, it seems likely that a change in scenery and a new approach from the left side of the plate will do him some good.