MESA, Ariz. — Chicago Cubs left-hander Jordan Wicks has reaped the benefits of his new manager getting an in-person look of his rookie season.
Craig Counsell had a front-row seat to Wicks’ worst start — the penultimate day of the season when the Cubs needed to beat the Brewers to avoid being eliminated from postseason contention. Backed by six runs in the first inning in Milwaukee, Wicks allowed three runs in the first and second innings and was knocked out after 1 2/3 innings. The tough outing followed six starts in which he allowed 11 runs for a 3.00 ERA.
Wicks and Counsell have talked about that outing, giving the 24-year-old insight into how the Brewers game planned against him.
“Game plans are going to be relatively the same when other teams try to attack me, and so just having a guy who’s done it on my side now is awesome,” Wicks said Friday.
Wicks is part of the competition to open the season as the Cubs’ fifth starter. Getting the start in Friday’s Cactus League opener, Wicks allowed one run on a homer in two innings. He opened the Cubs’ 8-1 win against the White Sox by striking out Kevin Pillar on a curveball. Christopher Morel’s two-run homer was part of a six-run first inning.
Counsell isn’t putting much stock in spring performances, certainly not this early in camp. He anticipates the Cubs needing eight or nine pitchers to make multiple starts for the Cubs this season, emphasizing the value of depth and contributions from beyond whomever is part of the opening-day roster.
“They are just getting ready here and we’ve got to give them a chance to do that and can’t expect perfection from the first moment out here,” Counsell said.
“When you have that foundation of success for Jordan, it makes it, like, I can be good here with what I do right now. That’s probably the most important thing to start out with for Jordan is that my stuff plays here.”
The next step in Wicks’ maturation: figuring out where he gets stuck in games if a pitch isn’t effective and how to combat that. Counsell and the Cubs want Wicks to give himself more options. That might mean being able to rely on his offspeed stuff when another pitch isn’t working.
One key for Wicks when he finds himself in those stuck moments is to take a deep breath and reset. It became a focal point of his offseason.
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“When the game starts to speed up a little bit, when they start to get runners on and stuff like that, how do you reset? What are your mechanisms to go to?” Wicks said. “That’s something I’m kind of playing with in spring training, try a few things and just go from there.”
Expect to see Wicks incorporate his slider more this spring as ideally another effective secondary option. His slider accounted for only 4% of his big-league pitches thrown last season and was largely ineffective. But he views the slider as a counterbalance to his elite changeup.
“To have that other seed to be able to plant in people’s heads and have another thing they have to prepare for is huge,” Counsell said. “Hitters in this league are too good to where you can only have one or two pitches to put them away with. You’ve got to have multiple options to divert their attention.”
Wicks was pleased with a slider he threw to Dominic Fletcher on the second pitch of the at-bat in the second inning, executing it perfectly to go ahead 0-2. Then, in the next at-bat against Rafael Ortega, Wicks threw a slider down the middle to get ahead in the count and stay in the zone.
“I can’t really say I didn’t accomplish what I wanted to there so I was really happy with those,” Wicks said.
Wicks doesn’t need to strike out a ton of hitters to be effective. He recorded three strikeouts or less in five of his seven starts last season for the Cubs. Wicks knows how to pitch, though, and his fastball-changeup combination is a difficult to match up for hitters.