Jordan Wicks Developing New Curveball with Tread Athletics
Tread Athletics burst onto the scene a few years ago and has quickly gained a reputation for developing pitchers at all levels of the game. Many of their instructors have been plucked away by MLB orgs, with Cubs pitching VP Tyler Zombro standing out as one of their more prominent expats. Tread has helped Jameson Taillon with his repertoire and is doing the same for lefty Jordan Wicks, who has yet to achieve escape velocity from Triple-A’s gravitational pull.
The key for Wicks, the No. 21 overall pick out of Kansas State in 2021, may be improving his curveball. The southpaw generates surprisingly little vertical movement despite his high arm slot — only 10 LHPs released the ball higher than his 54 degrees — and could benefit greatly from getting more depth on the hook. A slider was his only other breaking ball when he debuted in 2023, then he incorporated a sweeper in ’24 and threw both far more often than the curve last season.
In fact, Wicks only went to the curve twice out of 217 total pitches at the MLB level in 2025. That was just under 1% of his total repertoire, a sharp decrease from what was already limited usage in ’23 (8.4%) and ’24 (6.1%). That tends to happen when a pitch gets decidedly negative results, and even more so when it leads to massive reverse splits like those Wicks has pitched to so far.
As a changeup specialist who leans into traditional usage, it wouldn’t be surprising for Wicks to fare a little better against right-handed batters. After all, those guys are seeing his best pitch more than 10 times as often as their counterparts. He actually pitched to strong standard splits over 34.2 innings in his first season with the Cubs, but that flipped the following season before turning disastrous last year. Even accounting for the small sample, lefties hit .440 with a 1.040 OPS against Wicks in 2025.
If he wants to have a shot at remaining in the rotation, either in Iowa or as depth for the big club, something has to improve. Enter Tread and performance coordinator Turner Givens, who has moved Wicks from a spike grip to stacked fingers. By removing his index finger from the ball entirely, Wicks may generate both mechanical and mental improvements.
“It just feels so much like I’m stacking those fingers,” Wicks explains to Givens in the video below. “And so I don’t have to, like, try and spin it…I was trying to spin it out of hand, and now it’s just stack and [mimics throwing motion].”
That last part from Wicks is key, as he’s no longer trying to make the ball do something; he’s just letting the grip work. Turner noted that the adjustment has eliminated the “bump” from the curve’s shape, a telltale sign that astute hitters are easily able to pick on. That is especially true for a guy whose other breaking balls tend to hug the midline on a movement profile chart. Now the curve appears to have later movement, going from strike to ball with more depth than what Wicks was getting before.
Based on the numbers visible in the video, Wicks is getting as much as -15.3 inches of induced vertical movement with 8.1 inches of horizontal (glove-side) action. The last pitch shown, the one that got a “Jesus Christ!” from Givens, had -12 inches of vert with 10.6 inches of sweep. That’s more slurvy, really, but it’s an improvement over the results he’s gotten in the past.
After Wicks averaged -13.1 inches of vertical movement as a rookie, he only generated -11.7 inches the following season and just 9.5 inches last year. His H-break was 7.2 inches in each of those first two seasons, so getting anywhere from 8-10 is significant. He also appears to be throwing it in the 77-78 mph range, which would be slightly slower than before. While not a big difference, it helps to further separate this breaking ball from the slider (86-87 mph) and sweeper (82-83 mph).
At the end of the day, we’re only looking at a few pitches thrown in a controlled environment with a coach tracking everything in real time. But given what we know about Wicks and his past performance, it’s easy to drum up a little optimism that this could yield better results moving forward. I mean, it can’t hurt. With just 95 MLB innings across parts of three seasons, the last of which included only eight relief appearances, Wicks is running out of time to prove his value to the organization.
He won’t turn 27 until September, though, and still has time to figure it out. Assuming the Cubs end up making a relatively big rotation addition, they’re still going to need help in case of injuries or timing. Plus, they’re going to lose two or three arms to free agency after this season. I’m not ready to give up on Wicks just yet, and I think we’re going to see big improvements starting this spring.
