Aaron Hicks spent all of last season with the New Britain Rock Cats, the Minnesota Twins’ unfortunately named Class AA affiliate. He did well there, batting .286/.384/.460 as a 22-year-old center fielder. Hicks, the Twins’ first-round draft pick in 2008, could also have been a first-round draft pick as a pitcher and he was (according to Baseball America) a “tremendous amateur golfer.”
The Aaron Hicks Game
Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
With the off-season trades of Denard Span and Ben Revere, the Twins had a big hole in center field. Which is how Hicks skipped Class AAA and earned the job as the Twins’ Opening Day center fielder.
It hasn’t gone so well. Entering the Twins’ Monday-night tilt against the White Sox, Hicks was batting .137 with just one home run and three doubles. He might have been the worst-hitting every-day player in the major leagues (Jeff Keppinger’s offered some pretty strong competition).
For at least one night, though, all of that was completely forgotten. In the fourth inning, Hicks walloped a 416-foot solo homer to give the Twins a 5-2 lead. In the sixth inning, he hit another homer to make the lead 6-3. And in between, he did this:
One game doesn’t make a season, of course. But sometimes regression to the mean happens in a hurry, so maybe Hicks has more good games coming soon.
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