Cardinals decision to cut bait with former top prospect looks worse by the day

There has been much about the last year and a half with the St. Louis Cardinals that warrants criticism. And though we're only a little more than a week into the 2024 MLB season, it's appearing like one decision regarding a former top prospect in the organization made last year is among the worst.

Jordan Hicks was a raw flamethrower in the Cardinals farm system, but the mere velocity of his stuff had him as a Top 10 lock in that system in any sort of rankings. The hope was to develop him in the bullpen and perhaps stretch him into a starter later in his career. But in St. Louis, it never fully materialized, and he was ultimately sent to Toronto as part of the deadline fire sale a year ago.

It was a tough time when the Cardinals sent many players out of the organization, but it seemed as if the decision with Hicks amounted to cutting bait and calling their work with him a failure, more or less.

A big factor in that decision was Hicks' looming free agency in the 2023-24 offseason. On the open market, he landed with the San Francisco Giants, an organization that planned to give the flamethrower an opportunity as a starter. And as it turns out, they are looking extremely wise for that decision while the Cardinals, on the other hand, are looking more foolish by the day.

Cardinals decision to cut ties with Jordan Hicks keeps looking worse

Hicks's first start with the Giants was everything they could've asked for, pitching 5.0 innings while allowing only three hits, one walk and no runs and notching six strikeouts. But hey, that was just one start. No need to indict the Cardinals on such a small sample size, right?

Well, Friday marked the second start for Hicks in San Francisco as they took on the Padres, and he was once again lights-out, lasting a career-high seven innings (after not having pitched more than five in any previous game) and giving up just one earned run on five hits and no walks.

The sample size is still small, but Hicks is looking every bit the part of a surefire starting pitcher and one who could stick around in this league for a long, long time at just 27 years old.

Given that the Cardinals had to entirely reshape their pitching staff this offseason -- and doing so with stopgap aging veterans like Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson, no less -- you could imagine that Hicks would've been a valuable addition to St. Louis' rotation. Instead, he's thriving somewhere else.

President of baseball operations John Mozeliak may not like the criticism, but when the results like this are so in your face, it's hard not to offer a strong critique of how the Cardinals have handled their business.