When you start a season as dreadfully as Twins rookie outfielder Aaron Hicks did, pretty much anything that follows looks better by comparison. So the fact that he's batting nearly 90 points higher in May than he did in April doesn't mean as much as it could if he didn't hit .113 in his first month in the majors.
That said, there are some recent signs that Hicks might be figuring things out -- encouraging moments which indicate that while he has a long way to go, he is no longer a liability in the short-term and his potential is there in the long-term.
While he is still a dreadful .161 overall and an even worse .133 as a left-handed hitter, Hicks has homered twice from the left side on the Twins' road trip. On Tuesday, he followed a solo home run with what turned out to be the biggest hit of the game, driving a double to the left-center gap as a lefty and later scoring on a sacrifice fly in a 6-5, 14-inning Twins victory at Milwaukee.
In two of Hicks' best offensive games -- yesterday and his two-homer game against the White Sox -- he has also made a spectacular home run-saving catch in centerfield. And while runs batted in are often a poor measuring tool of production, his 17 RBI leads all rookies in the majors and is somehow more than Joe Mauer has.
The bottom line is that moving him lower in the order seems to have relaxed him and made him more aggressive. All five of his home runs have come this month, and all but one of his 11 extra base hits have been in May as well. Again, he's not setting the world on fire ... but at least he's no longer making every Twins' rally go up in flames.
