Torture won’t stop for Cardinals fans over tremendous missed opportunity

If there's one thing that this St. Louis Cardinals team needs, it's starting pitching. Particularly young starting pitching. Yes, the offense has been downright abysmal to begin the 2024 campaign, but there's reason to believe that'll turn around. It already has. The bullpen has been outstanding, particularly late in games. The rotation is the biggest weakness of this team.

Guys like Sonny Gray and Lance Lynn have gotten off to nice starts but the Cardinals ranked 23rd in rotation ERA entering play on Saturday and it feels like there isn't much room for improvement there.

The state of the Cardinals rotation is what makes the success of a guy like Jordan Hicks elsewhere just so frustrating.

John Mozeliak really missed the boat here.

Cardinals fans continue to suffer, watching Jordan Hicks flourish as a starting pitcher

Hicks spent parts of five seasons with the Cardinals where he'd primarily work out of the bullpen. All but eight of his 187 appearances with St. Louis came in relief. During his time with the Cardinals, he'd develop into one of the premier set-up men in the game when healthy. Unfortunately, outside of a short eight-start stint in 2022, Hicks never really got a chance to prove himself as a starter despite working mostly as a starter in the minors.

Hicks finally got his chance to start games when he signed a four-year deal with the San Francisco Giants this past offseason and it's safe to say that in the early going, he has been tremendous.

Through his first five starts of the season, Hicks has a 1.61 ERA in 28 innings of work. He's completed at least five innings in each of his starts, throwing as many as 96 pitches in an outing, and he has allowed one earned run or fewer in four of his five appearances.

Hicks is just 27 years old and is beginning to prove himself as a starting pitcher. Considering the Cardinals rotation is both below-average and old (their youngest starter is 32-year-old Steven Matz), they would've greatly benefitted by giving Hicks a chance to see if he could have stuck as a starter.

There's no telling how it would've worked out, but Hicks clearly deserved more of a chance than he got to start games for the Cardinals.