Aaron Hicks says ‘baseball wasn’t fun’ last season, Yankees outfielder ‘lost my approach’

Aaron Hicks was not on the favorable side of the Yankee faithful last season. The 33-year-old regularly had the boo birds singing during his forgettable 2022 season.

The outfielder slashed .216/.330/.313 with eight homers in 130 games last season which ultimately led to the Yankees searching elsewhere for an answer in left field when they acquired Andrew Benintendi from the Royals prior to the trade deadline.

Hicks knows last season wasn’t exactly one for the ages. After playing a total of 145 games from 2019-2021, the outfielder’s first full season since 2018 left a lot to be desired and potentially his future in pinstripes in question.

“Baseball wasn’t fun,” Hicks said in an article published Tuesday in The Athletic. “It was kind of one of those things where your team is winning and that’s the ultimate goal. That’s what’s fun about the game is being able to win all of the time.

“But when you’re not contributing, it kind of starts to feel like you’re not doing what you should be doing. I know the player I’m capable of being and I wasn’t even close to it. That’s just the way the season went.”

The former first-round pick of the Minnesota Twins felt out of sorts last season, he told The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner.

With the Bombers in their dominant ways earlier in the season, owning the best record in baseball by four games with a 64-29 record prior to the All-Star break, Hicks felt as if he was trying to force himself to be the hero with seemingly a different contributor to a win every single night. Granted it did work once with his game-tying three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Astros in June, however, it led to mostly ugly results.

“I felt like I was trying to force things that I normally wouldn’t,” Hicks said. “I was forcing myself to get big hits. I was forcing myself to swing out of the zone to do something to help the team win. A lot of that got me into trouble. Essentially, I just lost my approach.”

The Yankees are still not counting out production from Hicks as GM Brian Cashman stated on SiriusXM radio last month that he expects him to be the one who emerges as the starting left fielder. The Bombers aren’t exactly loaded with options as utility man Oswaldo Cabrera appears to be the only competition to take the job. Unless manager Aaron Boone is serious when he said he has tinkered with the idea of Aaron Judge playing left field to allow Giancarlo Stanton to man right field.

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Hicks remains under team control through 2025 as he signed a seven-year, $70 million contract extension with the Bombers prior to the 2019 season. Should he remain with the club by Aug. 8 of this season, he will have earned his 10-and-5 rights which grants any player with at least 10 years of service time who has spent five straight seasons with one team a no-trade clause.

The Yankees have been rumored throughout the offseason to be exploring moving Hicks and his three-years, $30 million remaining on his contract. If he remains on the roster past this trade deadline, it will become that much more difficult to execute a deal.